By the time this one lands, is there going to be anyone left to buy it?
Bethesda and Todd lost so much good will since Skyrim days.
People will still clamor for it. I don’t think it will ever come close to matching the magic of the previous titles. What made those great was that we didn’t have anything remotely close and it was always on the cusp of something groundbreaking. No one was expecting skyrim, it had a short advertisement cycle - people got hyped - and then it dropped and opened people’s minds up to what a modern RPG should resemble.
The formula is old and beaten into the ground for how Bethesda games work. They need STRONG writing and world building along with breaking from their typical structure of designing the game.
People are expecting Skryim 2.0 in where it completely blows you out of the water and I don’t think we’ll get that. Personally I think we’ll get a graphically polished game, with great writing and music, and sub par execution of basically everything else. Let’s hope I’m wrong on that last bit.
You say that as if Skyrim was revolutionary, but I never saw it as anything other than an evolution over Oblivion (and in some ways, a step backwards from Morrowind).
Agreed. I’d say Skyrim’s only real innovation where RPGs are concerned was its accessibility. Thats why it’s become such a staple of online culture, because anyone could pick it up and play it, so pretty much everyone did.
Good God I wish they’d bring back the morrowind cave systems. Each one hand crafted, sprawling with secrets abound. I recall spelunking in that game within a single cave for multiple hours, which felt like an in game week spent searching every nook and cranny. It was amazing to finally get out of and back into the sunshine.
Oblivion caves and dungeons for the most part felt like cookie cutter nonsense, and while the Skyrim caves and dungeons felt better, the quick loop to the beginning was a persistent theme and really took away from the immersion. There were at least a handful of complex cave systems.
Considering how terrible the writing is on Starfield, I’m not sure Bethesda has it in them anymore. The quests are often incredibly boring, and the worldbuilding itself is a bit meh. Same with the books you find; they cheaped out and used public domain materials for the most part, and the books that do have in house content are… not great. What I liked about Oblivion and Skyrim was that the books you could find really helped to “fill out” the world, but in Starfield they’re just either uninteresting or plain bad – like those fucking cringy joke books
Fallout 76 is also 6 years old…crazy that.
