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
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'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.
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.