Given the trajectory of the series (and Bethesda games in general) I have this creeping fear that it's going to be even more watered down than Skyrim is. It seems like with every game Bethesda releases they strip away RPG elements and dialogue and "streamline" everything, effectively making their beloved RPG franchises into action-adventure games like they did with Fallout 4. What are the odds they turn it around and actually make the excellent first person open world RPG the series deserves?

My dream is for TES to get it's own New Vegas, a return-to-form RPG from an outside company that actually knows how to write an interesting video game

  • bigbologna [she/her]
    ·
    3 years ago

    TES VI will be lauded as a 10/10 for the first 3 or 4 months after its release which is just in time for game awards. Then after like a year you realize it's solidly like a 5 or 6/10 that's propped up by modding. (This is the formula for every Bethesda game)

    Features Include:

    • An extremely barebones directional melee and blocking system that will be regarded as a massive improvement from Skyrim's combat system despite being what you would expect from a game from like 2009

    • There will be three towns with actual characters in them and every village will be a barebones patch of dirt with generic NPCs and no interesting stories. This is so you can use the settlement system from Fallout 4.

    • The settlement system will be a major part of the gameplay loop, and will be slightly more developed but not enough.

    • The settlement building interface will be improved significantly but it will still be pretty bad.

    • Skills will be removed, only perks

    • Two very significant and large sidequests will blatantly and directly contradict each other wrt lore

    • Most quests will have a radiant quest aspect to them, ostensibly to give more replayability. There will be exactly one quest where this is used in an interesting way and will be very early in the game. After that will be mostly used as a randomly generated location for a fetch quest portion.

    • Dragons as a level-scaled common enemy.

    • Massive waste of money big name actor to voice act some guy

    • Conversations will be as stilted and stiff as ever despite inheriting Fallout 4's conversation camera system that they also did not make use of in that game either.

    • Teethgrindingly painful reference to some Skyrim meme.

    • No voiced protagonist but the conversation system will be as bad as Fallout 4's.

    • You can pick any of the races as usual but the story will weirdly be obviously geared designed with a human protagonist in mind.

    • A major questline involves a conflict between two sides. You will not be able to choose, or the sides will be so indistinct from each other that there's no reason to choose besides which NPC soldier armor appearance you like better.

    • LeninWalksTheWorld [any]
      ·
      3 years ago

      You're right and you've successfully dehyped me from feeling any excitement. Fucking "radiant quests", just the shallowest, most mundane form of storytelling. Literally generated by a computer. Wouldn't want any creativity in your story now would we? better to just brag about how you can clear the same generic cave 5000 times and pretend that's fun gameplay. It's the perfect formula for late capitalist game development, keeps the game bulky but cheap, it's like sawdust filling in bread but digital. I fully expect the proportion of radiant quests to gradually grow to be the majority of the gameplay in the future.