After the massive blunder of Starfield, I cannot see how Elder scrolls 6 could possibly be successful. Everything points to the fact that they knew that the game was not even half finished, in my opinion, with major glaring issues, and they decided to just send it off anyway. The difference between this game and Oblivion is that this time, it wasn’t light-hearted and filled with silly mistakes that made people laugh. It instead inside it a lot of anger and disbelief as to how they could fail so spectacularly with a AAA title…
But this has not been the first time that Bethesda as a whole has failed, and is in fact the third strike. They failed spectacularly with Fallout 4, which took the gaming industry by surprise after seeing how poorly developed it was, and the extreme low quality of the story, how unfinished the game was, how simply broken many areas and features were, I could talk about it for hours. Biggest thing to me was the poorly made settlement system that barely even worked because there was no snapping, and it felt like playing an indie game. The second strike was Fallout 76, crazy how disappointing his game was and even to this day is still broken and in disarray. It’s only been able to survive purely because of microtransactions…
Then, you look at what most people are playing right now, and it’s Skyrim. Above any other game out there, it’s Skyrim. The similarity between Skyrim and Elder scrolls 6 doesn’t really matter that much, the age is what you should really focus on. Why are people playing such an old game still to this day? Hint, it’s because every single other title they’ve released has been a disappointment.
Personally, I have no faith or belief that Elder scrolls 6 will be anything other than a colossal disappointment. I don’t see how Bethesda as a studio can possibly manage to produce AAA titles anymore, I think they have a budget of half of what they need to have, and it’s only getting smaller each year as costs are being cut, and People are being laid off, stakeholders and stockholders want more revenue growth than ever before. It’s unbelievable honestly. They expect infinite growth with minimal headcount that keeps shrinking
Financially, I’m not sure if you could say that starfield or fallout 4 was a failure… Look at steamcharts player counts as an indication. All time peak concurrent players:
Skyrim: 90,000
Skyrim SE: 79,000
Fallout 4: 470,000
Fallout 76: 72,000
Starfield: 330,000
Sure skyrim has sold on many platforms and over time likely has sold the best, but you can’t say that starfield and fallout 4 were commercial failures. Starfield being on game pass day 1 means the real concurrent numbers would be enormous.
I’ve not played starfield and agree it looks like shit, but TES VI is likely going to sell gangbusters to mainstream audiences given how much Skyrim broke into the mainstream.
I agree with you that Bethesda isn’t what they used to be with TES Morrowind - Skyrim era and desperately need to get rid of that engine. But for the metric that truly matters, sales, I don’t know what it would take for TES VI to fail.
I think there’s two definitions of successful in gaming today. First is financially successful, it generated some decent profits for the stockholders. Second is how it was actually perceived by the community as a whole. Oblivion was spectacularly well received and made game of the Year edition. Fallout 4 was heavily criticized, but still somewhat successful in terms of the community reaction. Starfield was globally frowned upon, as someone who has played that exact game, it’s horrible. I honestly feel like that game is a one out of 10. 1.0 out of 10 would be my exact rating if I had to give it one. It’s not going to get the cyberpunk treatment, so sure maybe it’ll break profits and be considered financially successful. But I don’t think that game should ever be considered a success in any other aspect
A 1 out of 10 for Starfield is ridiculous; either hyperbole, or you haven’t played many video games before to see what a 1 out of 10 would truly be. I was very disappointed by it too, but level set a bit here.
I couldn’t take this post seriously with how much subjective opinion is stated as fact. Fallout 4 is one of my favorite games, but that doesn’t mean I’m blind to its faults and shortcomings. That being said, I can’t read something that’s claiming extremely broad negative things like Fallout 76 is still “broken” and only lives because of MTX" without acknowledging “why people are playing this and microtransacting if the game is broken and irredeemable?” And without defining what is broken and what is not.
I think Starfield was a wake up call for Bethesda. They need to heed it and keep up with the times, get back in touch with the simulational and unique things that they were known for and can still carve a niche out of, and not rest on their laurels as the rest of the gaming landscape innovates around them.
As soon as the unique and interesting mechanics and systems have been eclipsed by Bethesda’s failure to make an exceedingly polished and innovative game, people stop justifying the jank and the public opinion falls off. Starfield is their last sign to turn the ship around.
I remember buying mistmare on cd back in 2003. That thing was a broken mess of a game that crashed constantly, and no returns once you open the seal. Kids these days don’t know what a 1/10 game really is, lol. That game was so bad most of the (short) Wikipedia page on it is about it’s low scores, including a 0/10.
I’ve played 20 years worth of games. My criteria is actually very logical. What is the scale of the company and their resources, the budget, past releases, and then finally, the game itself: How many hours do I get out of it? How linear is it? How believable is it? How captivating? Replayability? I give Starfield a 1.0/10 in all of these. Keep reading if you’re curious why
Linearity: This game is almost entirely linear, despite being called a “sandbox”. There’s no point whatsoever to wandering around away from the main storylines. Unlike Skyrim, Oblivion, hell even Fallout 76… You can’t just go wander off and find some new awesome area to do interesting stuff in. You find a new area, but it’s bland, has nothing interesting, or is very short-lived. So you’re basically coaxed back to just go finish the main story, with is such a linear and plain slog.
Believable: There are so few important choices to make, none of them really feel meaningful either. Also, the story just feels so cheesy. It’s so bad. You’re wandering around with a cowboy and his pre-teen daughter shooting people in the face, really? Yeah, that makes sense. All your companions are judgmental and never STFU with the ‘holier than thou’ attitude, forcing you to basically be good, or to be lectured constantly and nagged. Towns feel pointless and unbelievable. Not a single town I visited felt like a real place. For example, the western style town felt like Westworld. It was so clowny.
Replayability: Once you’ve done the entire storyline, there’s literally no reason to replay the game. It’s such a linear and unimaginitive story that there’s really nothing worth going back and seeing again
Now why is this a 1.0 out of 10? Taking the company size, their past projects, their capabilities, their support network (the entire mod community of all their games)… They had the potential to make SOMETHING better than this, but it was clearly rushed. It’s also highly unlikely they’ll give it the Cyberpunk or NMS treatment, leaving it bland, boring, broken… for $70. Unbelievable. The fact that a multi-million dollar company backed by Billion dollar Microsoft could produce this is just ridiculous.
I would say non of your points are valid, but I am someone with about 300h in Starfield and I didn’t quit because I didn’t had any fun anymore but because other games stated to pile up. Personally I can’t wait for Shattered Space and I will play most likely start a complete new character and play the game from scratch with the DLC.
Do I think that it is a perfect game? Hell no! No game is perfect and Starfield has its fair share of problems and issues (the really boring temple “puzzles” for example). But for me Starfield is a very interesting and believable hard science fiction world that is not far away from what we could do with our technology now, if we would figure out a way to jump faster then light. Starfield is very good in delivering a believable space, and yes a believable space is huge and mostly boring. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t find for example beautiful places out there, it just is random, take lots of time (due to the frigging size of space and planets) and is rare. Starfield gives us a universe that is in huge parts like the real universe out there. For me the main quest of Starfield is one of the best main quests ever written by Bethesda, just after Morrowind and way better then the “Find the hidden heir, protect the hidden heir, close some portals and watch the hidden heir fight the big evil of the game” main quest of Oblivion. That I, personally, find utterly boring and unsatisfying. The strengh of every Bethesda Elder Scrolls/Fallout/Starfield Game is not that the main quest but all the other quests around and starfield has lots of great side quests, companion quests, and faction quests all over the game.
Is Starfield a 9 or 10 out of 10? No! But there are only very few games out there that I would give a 10/10 rating Is it a 1 out of 10? Not at all! But it is a strong 8 and could become a 9 when the DLC is for Starfield what Far Harbour was for Fallout 4.
All personal taste, Starfield is unfortunately not the right game for you but it is a great game for me. I love it!
My God… doing what, exactly? It took me like 40 hours to 100% the game, then everything else is pointless. Every planet is completely barren…
In 35 hours, I got 28 out of 62 achievements and left 3 or 4 of the major faction quest lines undone. 40 hours doesn’t sound right for 100%.
Having fun mostly. Doing quests, exploring the planets, building bases, building ships, doing NG+ multiple times and playing different playstyles in every new universe. There is so much in the game to do and to experience. And saying that you 100% the game, yeah sure when that means having every achievements, but that is not how to really 100% the game at all. At least not for me.
All your points are valid, but people might not judge the game based on your criteria. One could rate the game in Scale, Artistic vision or Gear progression and would not land on a 1 out of 10. Surely not on a 10/10 but definitly not on a 1. Even in your categories you have a strong bias. IMO there is no way you can give linearity a 1/10. Sure all of the sidestuff is not great but it’s there. A game with the lowest score in linearity does not even have options. Like one Mario level and that’s it.
I agree with your point how games also need to be measured by how big the company is and how great the games potential is. Totally 1/10 for Bethesda there.
I’d argue that the best part of the game is the pirate questline. You get to pick between being a double agent, gathering evidence and sabotaging their plans, or an evil pirate that fights the law and only cares about themselves.
Scale? It’s plenty big, but there’s not a lot of good content in it. Quantity vs quality.
Artistic vision. There’s something there, but it wasn’t realized.
Gear progression is bubkis, they have this weird rarity system that makes no sense and makes it feel awful.
Quality would be a new criteria which I wanted to exclude in scale. Sure the quality of it all ain’t great but there are a lot of poeple who enjoy gigantic maps, no matter how bland.
Your opinion is your opinion, but I don’t think the scale of the company or its resources matter one iota. Games made by a single person have been better than those made by thousands of people, and that’s without putting my thumb on the scale in either direction. I don’t even agree that Starfield is linear, but even if it was, that doesn’t make a game bad. If you’re calling Starfield a 1 out of 10, there’s no room to go down from there on that scale, which is absurd to me, because that means you’d have to cram Superman 64 and Bubsy 3D on the same part of that scale.
It absolutely matters. I can forgive and honestly move past a 1 person team or small indie company making a huge clusterf*ck of a game. But if you have 25 million dollars to make a game and you produce literal trash, there’s no excuse. The little guys/indie studios struggle, like totally understandable. How does BETHESDA sized company fail so spectacularly? That’s the core complaint.
??? this is a Nintendo 64 game, not even remotely the same resources available. Now we have incredibly powerful tech available in the gaming industry, and although we can’t confirm it, supposedly generative AI is being used. You’re talking about someone building a log cabin and it looking like crap, versus someone an entire construction company with top of the line cranes and huge vehicles.
It definitely does not matter. You build a game that you’re capable of making. If it felt like they were making a game that needed a bigger budget to realize the design they were shooting for, that will affect my opinion of it. Games like Halo Infinite spent so much money on the game making it “big” that it actually made the game worse than if they’d spent less on it and kept it smaller. I don’t give a damn how much they spent making it. We had a whole era of RPGs in the 2010s that were made for a tiny fraction of the development cost of what was coming out of BioWare, but they were better RPGs without having to give them any sort of pity scale to arrive at that conclusion.
I brought up Superman 64 because it’s known to be one of the worst games ever made. When you know how bad a game can actually be, Starfield has no business being a 1 out of 10.
I think you’re missing the point that the majority of l companies don’t care about the quality of what they release. Large pro consumer companies like Valve and Lego (I couldn’t think of any others video game related), who might be willing to let their bottom line fall in favor of improving relations with the customer, seem to be very much in the minority. For most others, the only thing that’s important is how the bottom line is affected. Starfield, for all its flaws, was the #11 bestselling game of 2023.
Now, you could be onto something when you mention Bethesda’s poor track record, and how that might play into ES6’s release. If they keep making disappointing games, maybe there will be a “boy who cried wolf” type situation where, since Bethesda keeps making disappointing games, no one will want to buy ES6 by the time it comes out. Personally though, I don’t think that’s very likely. The reality is that many (if not most) consumers don’t even know who makes the games they buy, nor do the look into the other games that company makes. And for the ones that do, more still probably don’t care. I think no matter what there will be a sizable amount of people who see Elder Scrolls 6 and go “Hey, I liked Skyrim, this’ll probably be great!”
Yeah but I hope active community members like here help to spread the word of well working companies
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Nope, there’s lots of real reviews out there besides my own. Generally, the community views star field incredibly negatively. You had to purchase it on Steam to leave a review. That’s an objective fact. Ain’t nothing fake about it. It was overwhelmingly negative on release.
How much money a game made, on the other hand, is worthless. Who cares? Call of Duty is objectively very profitable. Does that mean it’s a masterpiece now??
This is the only sort of success they care about. Anything else is secondary. These companies gladly burn bridges with their communities so long as they believe it’ll benefit their bottom-line.