Hear me out, Bethesda hasn’t made a really successful game since Skyrim. their new overlords are more than happy to shuffle them around, and who’s to say Todd Howard won’t retire after TES6 is launched?
I’m seeing a lot of parallels to Bioware, with game after game not doing as hot as the previous ones, and XBOX being very trigger happy with axing studios that aren’t pulling their weight, similar to EA.
It’s possible TES6, if it releases, will be the make it or break it of the company.
Its good enough to spend time moaning about it not being great.
It has two or three issues, and the problem is theyre buried so deep in the design they compromise everything and are essentially unfixable.
The art, setting, bespoke quests are all great. Even the gunplay really, which is a shock but its honestly fun.
Ship building is possibly the best ship design system ever made. And its completely pointless, you will never see the inside of the ship as you teleport to PoIs and barely see the outside.
Inventory management is hell. Building your own mining base depends on very large inventory usage. And the reward is more materials for your inventory to do upgrades to weapons and armour you barely need.
The environmental damage system is incomprehensible so luckily it almost never matters. You take damage breathing in your sealed space suit?? Ridiculous.
The skill system does not feel good, all it can do is unlock stuff above that doesnt feel like it really matters, or gives more inventory management nonsense; or give incremental improvements to damage etc that do not feel good.
And the kicker, Skyrim draws you in by promising and delivering more and more new places to explore and once thats replaced with random pois the entire game collapses around it. When exploring feels pointless the entire game feels pointless.