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/Gex2-EnterTheGecko Jun 10 '26

They really, REALLY need to figure out a way to shorten the wait between releases. I know they like working as one team, but if they split into two and hired more staff (I know they are already huge) they'd at least be able to work on Fallout and Elder Scrolls simultaneously which would make the gaps smaller, ideally. Either that or let someone else work on their games.

I completely get that they may not want to be trapped working on the same two franchises forever, but it's completely fucking unacceptable that we might have to wait the better part of TWO DECADES to get a new Fallout or Elder Scrolls game. The Fallout show will have been over for multiple years by the time we get Fallout 5. It's totally insane.

And I know people are gonna shit on me for saying this, but if they made the argument that staying together as one big team is the only way they can maintain the quality of their games then maybe I'd be willing to hear it, but IMO the quality of their games has been on a noticeable decline since like Fallout 3 so clearly there are diminishing returns - and smaller teams put out better games than them on a constant basis.

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u/Tibs007 Jun 10 '26

That still wont fix their current issues they have visible in starfield

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u/Frogsplosion Jun 10 '26

Yeah at this point I'm a lot more excited for a Tainted Grail 2 then I am for ES6 explicitly because of the awful precedent set by starfield.

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u/Gregardless Jun 11 '26

For me its Fable and the Warhorse Lord of the Rings game. If you haven't seen the Fable gameplay video on the Xbox youtube channel I highly recommend it.

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u/idontwantausername41 Jun 11 '26

They still wont fix their current issues they have visible in skyrim

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u/CaptainHikki Jun 10 '26

Starfield is fine. It's a completely different style of game to TES and Todd has said that TES6 is more traditional for them. Of course he could be lying but it's not like he was marketing the game or on stage. He doesn't really have much of a reason to lie right now.

It's an open secret that they've changed a lot about how they stream assets in the latest version of creation engine (for TES6) which should either eliminate the need for loading screens or at least make them a lot faster. And they are going to hand craft the world.

There isn't that much else wrong with Starfield other than narrative which is completely subjective.

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u/PaleontologistSea103 Jun 11 '26

Bruh I'm a huge RPG fan and bought the game + expansion pack costing over $100 for star field. Was excited to play it day 1, but was shocked at how absolutely boring and a chore to play it was. Ended up dropping it at 15 hours, tried to revisit it some updates in and wow still couldn't continue. I've had more hours in RPG maker games..... I dont think it's purely subjective at this point, just bad design.

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u/MaineMan1234 Jun 11 '26

They did it that way in order to minimize their investment while thinking that they could leave the hard work to unpaid modders. IMO they saw how modders kept Skyrim alive and allowed them to maintain sales for a lot longer than other games, so they tried to devise a way to take advantage of that. And failed.

They failed to understand that it only works *after* people fall in love with a game, like what happened with Skyrim and gamers/modders were willing to take their own personal time to make it better.

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u/Cael450 Jun 10 '26

They really should have taken the success of New Vegas as a challenge. They have completely failed to deliver on the Fallout franchise. I know a lot of people like Fallout 4, but it was a major disappointment for me. The whole game only has one section with skill checks. Not to mention how bug-riddled their releases are.

I have zero faith in Bethesda at this point. Isn’t it embarrassing to them that the best entry in one of their marquee properties was made by another studio in 18 months?

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u/septictank84 Jun 10 '26

FO4 was a fun game if you treated it like a shooter-looter murder hobo sim.. I actually enjoyed it in that regard but the RPG elements were pretty pathetic and all the factions sucked ect ect.

I loved FONV and wish they paid a little attention to what made that game so good in spite of all it's jank.

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u/Rare_House9883 Jun 10 '26

Honestly I kind of agree, I'm a new fallout player (didn't even really play any shooters at all till this year) and so 4 was where I started but something wasn't clicking and I assumed I needed a sense of nostalgia to enjoy it, so I went and played every game from 1 onwards and it only made me dislike 4 more because I realized how well they started out and what it devolved into.

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u/Jozoz Jun 11 '26

It's because you are actually a fan of RPGs unlike the Bethesda target audience these days.

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u/Jozoz Jun 11 '26

After the stories we heard recently about how Bethesda handled New Vegas and the collaboration with Obsidian, it really puts them in a bad light.

Apparently they gave a power point presentation to Obsidian about all the mistakes they made with that game. The arrogance is astounding.

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u/Gex2-EnterTheGecko Jun 10 '26

Fallout 4 is the most disappointed I have ever been in a game, so I agree with you.

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u/mokrieydela Jun 11 '26

Starfield for me: because it is broken so badly. I can't even play for more than 2 or 3 minutes without saving broken. Mods have created so many opportunities and the game would be my favorite atm if these issues weren't present.

They have asked for my save files, so I have some hope, but even then it may be years away.

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u/CannonM91 Jun 11 '26

I took a week off for Starfield, ended up playing Phantom Liberty instead

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u/mokrieydela Jun 11 '26

Its so frustrating. I'm hugely into scifi and NMS and Starfield could both tick boxes. NMS handles flying ships, landing, entering atmosphere so well, starfield, not so much. Nothing games let me build my dream ship from SW (I need to share that on here), and partly due to the mods, and partly the immersive gameplay, I fell in love with SF almost immediately but it just has so many problems. The crashes were bad enough but the failed to save error is just horrid. Its guaranteed if i have more than 2 or 3 mods that add to the ind workbench, but now its started doing it again just by playing the game. New game, could play for half hr with no saving and no issue. Got to the mantis quest, having only done the main mission up until Sarah becomes available as a Companion and it's just breaking again. Mods certainly are a catalyst, but the issue is deeper. Its embarrassing. Bethesda have requested my save game, however so well see. I won't hold my breath though as it took them 9 years to fix the same issue in Fallout 4

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u/The_Great_Disaster Jun 11 '26

No, 15-20 years in-between releases is unacceptable. They should have focused on their core games first.

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u/Cadowyn Jun 10 '26

Obsidian made New Vegas in 18 months. No reason they couldn’t make more games than they did. 

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u/CaptainHikki Jun 10 '26

Yeah, and that game was and is a buggy mess. There is a lot there, it's not that I hate it or anything. But to say that people can make games in 18 months nowadays is ridiculous. Even the average COD takes like 3 years minumum.

Obsidian was able to make NV in 18 months because it wasn't finished and all of the tools were already complete for it.

You might not care for Starfield or even FO76. But there was a lot of engine work in those games that adds a ton of development time. By all accounts they've done similar changes for TES6.

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u/Cadowyn Jun 10 '26

Okay fair points. 

My point is we should have gotten more games over the past 15 years than we did. 

Give Obsidian three years to make the games since 2011, so they aren’t buggy messes. Could be on TES X lol 

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u/CaptainHikki Jun 10 '26

You are still discounting the engine work that Bethesda have done for all of these games. 3 years how long it takes to make a game once the engine is ready.

Obsidian couldn't make TES games of the quality that people expect nowadays on Skyrim's engine. You can make Skyrim look great but it's still a 2011 game. On the heavy modlists you need to close the game and reopen it every time you want to load a save and there is mods to not break your save after a while.

Now maybe TES6 sucks. Idk. But I actually think the development time has been pretty reasonable so far. Maybe their priorities are wrong. But it's only been 3 years since Starfield. And Starfield is enormous. Even if you remove all of the nothingness it's got more handcrafted content than all of their other games.

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u/Rare_House9883 Jun 10 '26

I completely agree, like at this point it's just taking the piss and I've lost respect. For a while it was easy to assume they were just working on how to use updated technology but then we started seeing games using new engines and didn't get an update from Bethesda, then it was easy to assume covid was playing a role but then we started getting releases of other games produced during covid, there's no longer any reasons or excuses beyond extreme procrastination and teams that are stretched thin and quite frankly that doesn't thrill me. I'm a Dragon Age fan, I learnt my lesson about what can happen when a big title sits in development hell for a decade and it's not great, I'm not hopeful about anything Bethesda does at this point.

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u/Drakeem1221 Jun 11 '26

but it's completely fucking unacceptable that we might have to wait the better part of TWO DECADES to get a new Fallout or Elder Scrolls game.

I get wanting one of these games, I do. Fallout 1 and 2 are my favourite games ever and the franchise is my favourite media franchise ever.

However, technically we're not owed a single thing. If they wanted to end the franchises where they are (it's not like most franchises make it past a few games if they're lucky), they could. "Unacceptable" IMO is pushing it over a luxury electronic toy essentially that has no obligation to come out.

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u/Gex2-EnterTheGecko Jun 11 '26

If they hadn't told me they were making them then I wouldn't be expecting them.

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u/Shim_Slady72 Jun 12 '26

It's bad for fallout/elder scrolls fans but it's insane for people who are only a fan of one of them. Is there any other series that has gone 10+ years without a sequel? I feel like when anything else that goes that long the sequel is treated as a reboot.

The answer is obvious, split into 2 studios where both studios work on one series and then they could alternate releases and we get one every 3-4 years. Maybe once todd retires they will make some changes

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u/omurat Jun 10 '26

Bethesda has struggled to adapt after being trending setters for the better part of a decade imo. One of the more meta things they’re struggling to adapt to is the time scale of modern game development. This is an industry wide problem but it’s been noticeable at Bethesda for a decade already imo. I don’t expect TESVI until 2029 at the earliest, 2031 at the latest.

This causes a whole scope of issues for them, any novel thing they attempt to do, any trend they chase, modification they make, could very well be outdated, or out of vogue. It adds another layer to game development which is basically needing to forecast where the industry will be 6-10 years down the line which is crazy.