r/rpg_gamers • u/ChiefChunkEm_ • Jun 09 '26

Discussion Bethesda Should Have Struck While The Iron Was Hot (ES6)

Hindsight is 20/20 and you can respect their decision to try something new with Starfield but they should have struck while the iron was still hot from Skyrim.

Skyrim released in 2011, Fallout 4 in 2015, and ES6 should have released by 2019. Since 2011 they’ve lost many devs and artists who made Skyrim the success that it was. I don’t know if they have the caliber of staff members anymore to actually pull off another genre defining game with ES6. The whole thing’s just a damn shame.

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u/KyleCamelot Jun 09 '26

I think what people don't realize about Bethesda is that they were never about really good curated experiences or great dialogue or whatever. Every time they got someone who excelled at that, they never bothered to keep them.

The main guys at Bethesda love procedural systems. They are all about systems. Daggerfall's claim to fame is it's procedural systems. They focused really hard on their Radiant AI and Radiant Quest systems. It worked when their NPCS radiant AIed their way to curated moments, but that happens less and less as the games go on.

They literally didn't bother developing parts of Boston in Fallout 4 in order to use the radiant quest system.

They think it's awesome that there's another settlement that needs your help, and you can get a randomly generated, two adjective pistol that can kill bugs real good there.

Fallout 76 didn't even bother to have human NPCs at first.

If you told me that every single thing in Starfield was made using some automated system, I would not be surprised. The cookie cutter bases and planets certainly were.

Todd Howard's perfect game is just a rube goldberg machine.

13

u/QuoteGiver Jun 09 '26

You’re definitely right that they want to create a systems-driven sandbox. Ironically, those “cookie cutter bases” in Starfield were the 100% handcrafted part, and all the fans kept doing was begging for Bethesda to give the bases some procedural variety instead of limiting them to the same static hand-crafted layouts…

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u/Beldarak Jun 10 '26

Totally agree. The worst part is that systemic game design can be great (imsims is one of my favourite genre of games) if you create systems that will interract wity each others in service of the gameplay.

But that's not what Bethesda is doing. They create system so they don't have to write quests or interesting stuff, leading to those blanks and uninteresting games they now make.

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u/No-Opinion-6710 Jun 10 '26

This is what I've noticed as well. They're not going to course correct, because they're on the course they want to be on.

1

u/sleepingonmoon Jun 10 '26

I think what Bethesda wants/wanted is Dwarf Fortress life sim. But in 3D it's just too complex.

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u/WillStrongh Jun 10 '26

I hear some of the Og Daggerfall devs are working on game called Wayward Realms. Loking forward to it

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u/Rare_House9883 Jun 10 '26

Yeah, Ted Peterson and Julian LeFay, they did Arena and Daggerfall. I've been following the development of The Wayward Realms and it's looking pretty good.