The irony is that Beth pretty much set the standard for ambitious, weird and unexpected with Morrowind, and have been backing away ever since.
The arc from Arena -> Daggerfall -> Morrowind really made it feel like they were mastering the recipe. Daggerfall is great for weird and ambitious too but not as approachable as Morrowind, and more or less kicking off modern modding is a big deal for Morrowind. Oblivion was a bit of a slump but felt like they could recover. Then Skyrim 😞 it’s embarrassing
Imma gonna fight ya all. Skyrim is a good game, even vanilla. For it’s time. The rereleasing to infinity hurt it because people compared it to newer games.
It’s not as deep as Morrowind/Oblivion, but it is a good game. Just aimed more at casuals.
Skyrim you could at least argue nailed a sweet spot of customization and player freedom with simplicity for the normies.
Or maybe they just liked the race war subtext?
I think Quakeworld and Half-life probably deserve more of the credit for kicking off the modding community but Morrowind on PC definitely gave Xbox gamers something to be jealous of.
Im convinced someone at the top levels of the company us super far up their ass about the things Bethesda are doing while forgetting to ask if the thing they want players to do is fun. Too many Bethsoft games are running into the “this stretch isn’t fun” problem.
Yes, and his name is Todd Howard.
We’ve all seen Emil talk about his total lack of process and the general way he does things. Todd has said before he doesn’t play games but inserts himself into random parts of development. The studio is led by total buffoons.
Howard has reportedly been championing procedurally generated content for years or perhaps decades. We saw echoes of this in Starfield. The result is quite expected: boring and vanilla. Especially when contrasted with Bethesda’s previously great storytelling with intricate characters and hand-crafted experiences. We see once again with Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 how important that is. Yes, it’s time consuming and expensive, but it’s clearly loved by customers and critics.
Compounding this was Starfield’s mediocre writing. It took a clear and obvious dive from previous games. It felt incredibly safe. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of it was AI generated.
To be fair, it’s hard to say what Bethesda has to offer when they haven’t released anything since 2011. [checks wikipedia] Nope, nothing. Unless you count Fallout 4, which I wouldn’t.
Starfield was like a child’s half-inflated balloon: let go with high hopes only to immediately disappoint, then swiftly forgotten once it drifted out of sight. Bethesda wanted to reach the stars, yet only managed to drop trash in someone’s garden.
Bethesda also claims to have released a
gamenew instrumental album called Starfield.Shame about the price tag and download size though.
As much as I like FO4 it’s basically a total conversion mod of Skyrim.
FO76
Which, after all this time, is actually fun.
Or Obsidian
Always has been.
