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I think Dwarf Fortress is going to hold the crown for ultimate fantasy world simulator. I don't think ES6 will allow for systematic breeding and killing of mer-children for their valuable bones.
I think it would be very funny if the game came out and was good. Like Bg3 level good. Just the irony of everybody going "not Todd doing his bullshit again" and it turns out to be a perfect game or something.
And for the record I'm not a huge Bethesda fan.
Edit: I'm astonished I even have to say this, but this is just a stupid joke comment. I'm not trying to make comparisons between baldurs gate 3 and a game that hasn't even come out yet. Don't dig that deep.
I'm not into fantasy at all, but it's would be so funny seeing people cope about the game being good. But let's be real, if it's still on creation engine, it won't be.
The engine's name has very little to do with the tech in it, much less the quality of the game. It might well suck but it won't be because of this.
I agree the name means nothing. Which is why when people go gaga over Creation, I have to remind them it's still GameBryo, but with more graphical features tacked on to it. The foundation of shit that is GameBryo is still at the heart of the tech driving their games. If Bethesda's games were buildings, they all build them on a foundation of sand.
I also agree it's not the reason why their games suck (their games in and of themselves tend to not suck), but it will be the reason why it performs like shit or has the same technical issues that have existed since they started using GameBryo. Unless even after all the time they've spent using the engine they still suck at using it, and that's the reason they have so many problems.
The only other company and series of games I see having the same stuff holding back making better products because of the engine used is Bohemia with ARMA. They have just kept piling stuff on top of Virtual Battle System and all the problems stemming from VBS are present in the current iteration of the engine. Even the devs themselves hate it, but it would be way more work to make an entirely new engine.
The worst part is that it wouldn't be that hard to "up" the level of Bethesda games. More focus on the writing, both story and characters would go a long way.
Dropping the whole "It's one big world, no transitions." goal. Make cities huge, with transitions and fill them with stuff and people. More "inhabited biomes" so to speak.
Choice & Consequence. Having different paths the players can go down. Locking players out of certain content and areas because of their choice, isn't a bad thing. It just encourages multiple playthroughs. As well as adding multiple ways to dealing with a problem.
Not forcing motivation or character upon the player. The "chasing after a loved one" motivation in Fallout is terrible. And being a 'shiny superman' in both TES and Fallout is boring. We need more grey-area to move around in.
There's clearly more that could be added to the list. But these four points alone would elevate their games to a more passable grade.
But this is just my personal opinion.
I'd be happy with just Skyrim with better melee combat.
Skyrim with actually good melee combat, much greater magic variety, companions who are smarter and not suicidal, horses who can move around with logical sense, more biome variety as much as I love what's already there, factions that don't end in you ruling all of them at once...
Turns out Skyrim gets a lot right but there are tons of things that could be much better.
I just wanted Skyrim where I could invite a few friends to come along for dungeons. Then they made Elder Scrolls Online as though that was at all the same thing.
This just in: guy whose job it is to sell you a product really wants you to know the product will be good so you'll pre order it
The product was announced 5 years ago. 5.
They the. Said nothing for half a decade. Now starfield is coming out and is shipped from their perspective so he’s on to his next sale. Simple as that. See you in another 5+ years
Too late, Baldurs gate 3 already came out. And I didn’t need to buy horse armor with real money. 10/10
i genuinely cannot imagine that it'll be anything other than a continuation of the bethesda model: simplify and just add more environments to keep the players inside the basic gameplay loop of "go here, do thing, return, reward, go here, do thing"
Skyrim but no skill tree, too complicated. Player can buy every weapon and spells and skills level are just damage boost. Bethesda adds a 3rd person view during conversation and a weird standard male voice so that any chance of roleplay is dead. All cool spells are removed and players can only use destructions spells. No more illusion or alteration funny spells. Only fireballs and bolts exist now. All guilds quests have been removed in favour of radiant quests. Everything is randomly generated and sold as replayability and "every playthrough is unique". Main quest is 3 quests long because people didn't finish skyrim main quest. Everything is level scaled. They learned from skyrim and oblivion mistake so now every enemy is scaled but 10lvl below you so you never struggle against anything (no more oblivion sponges!). Every location can be fast traveled to from the beginning of the game because the world is too big. Spears have been added to the game but it's an official creation club mod only. The stamina bar has been removed for "faster paced" combats.
Anyway that's my prediction for TES 6
76 has actually made me pretty hopeful for the direction of bethesdas games- it includes a return to older style dialogue, introduced more skill checks and the like, featured a more cohesive world and generally seemed like it went back on the simplification a fair bit
starfield similarly seems to be more of a return to form for them, focusing more on character builds, an expansive trait system etc
it is also being worked on heavily by the lead quest designer for far harbor iirc, which is absolutely a good sign and is setting my hopes high for a deeper, more complex and more forked main questline than Bethesda usually goes for
I'm just worried it's going to be some Denuvo-encumbered, unmoddable, play-once-and-forget game.
I think realistically is going to continue using their crusty old gamebryo engine, play and handle exactly like previous games.
Almost certainly still stuck with their fork of gamebryo. On the bright side, the footage I've seen of Starfield suggests that they've actually gotten around to implementing a better animation system.
I'm not sure on the specifics of how animations work at the engine level (I know there's stuff about animation rigs, but not much beyond that) but all their games up until now have had the same system of character animations and it consistently looked ancient. Straight from the late 90s levels.
Pfft... I really doubt Elder Scrolls 6 will even be in the same league as Dwarf Fortress; the ultimate fantasy world simulator that already exists.
Far different games though. Completely different genres and I don't find dwarf fortress as immersive as even nethack due to it being more of a god game. It really pulls me far out of the experience when you don't control a single character. I still find it fun but more in a strategy system way rather than an RPG.
You... Can control a single character?
Have you only played the Steam version? The non-steam build has Adventure mode, where you control just a single character in a turn-based roguelike. IDK why it wasn't included with the Steam release, but it's always been my favorite part of the game.
Oh, I am far mistaken then. Yeah, I've only seen the steam version.
This article is almost entirely non-news. ES6 is a long ways off, was likely announced prematurely, and they have nothing new to say.
The only nugget in the article that seemed relevant to me was that in the engine work for Starfield, Bethesda was mindful of including future engine requirements from ES6.
The rest was just what you'd expect the ES6 project lead to say: "We want it to be amazing, of course!"
was likely announced prematurely,
It was announced 5 years ago and there’s still no release date. You can drop the “was likely”, it’s a definitive. It was.
Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies 🎵
I want Todd to not make promises he can't keep.
Todd already lives in a fantasy simulator
I mean, of course he wants that, he's the direction of the biggest fantasy-world simulator franchise out there.
And you only have to wait 5 more years for to be considered to be released and delayed for 3 more!
Unless they've made some major engine changes... I feel like it's going to be hard to top games like BG3, Elden Ring, or even Breath of the Wild.
BG3 has the deep story and npcs. Elden Ring has the emphasis on combat. Breath of the Wild freeform exploration.
Yes, I want a game that combines all of those and in the ES series the closest was probably Morrowind (combat being perhaps the most notable lack.)
Also ES has some of the best, deep, insane lore. The series is at its worst when it tries to be grounded.
Even Skyrim ends with you going to the afterlife to gather aid from the dead and fight the embodiment of the cyclical nature of time by imposing the concept of mortality on it. And somehow that was a bog standard dragon fight.
Oblivion was fantastic too I think. Things started going seriously downhill with Skyrim, at least that is what I think.
Bethesda, everything doesn't need to have the biggest map ever, it just needs to have good writing and replayability.
Like New Vegas has a map 3 times smaller than fallout 4 & 76 and I'm still enjoying it almost 15 years later. (I'm not knocking those other games, I'm just saying map and game hugeness isn't what matters.)
You don't need the biggest map ever to make a good game. You do, however, need the biggest map ever to make a good Elder Scrolls game. People referring to BG3 don't really understand the essence of the Elder Scrolls, a vision the series has pursued all the way back to Arena.
...well when you put it that way you are right. Elder scrolls games are known for having enormous expansive maps, criticizing that is like criticizing mario for having too many coins or something haha
Mario games are all right, except for all the platform jumping.
Todd Howard wants Elder Scrolls 6 to be ‘the ultimate fantasy-world simulator’
Says the scared developer after Baldur's gate 3 success.
Elder Scrolls games don't really have any direct competition.
Just releasing a slightly improved version of Skyrim would make that game the "ultimate fantasy simulator".
If they give it fair weather, I'm in.
[edit]
And reintroduce features from Daggerfall that have since been removed.
Skills and spells that outright don't work and unreadable maps from hell ?
Just joking, I know how impressive Daggerfall was, but wow did it feature some of the trademark Bethesda jank already.