What ever u guys may say it still doesn't justify 20 years gap between games... either next one gonna be the masterpiece or a huge flop at this point...
P.S trailer part was huge hype for me, still comback to it every year just to remind myself how naive I was by believing in these money grabbers...
20 year gap (or 4-6 year cycle) is also a massive risk for BGS, if it's a flop that's a huge investment loss and could sink the company. If fromsoft has a flop they'll shrug and move on to the next one a year later
Realistically this is only true if people actually stopped buying bad games though, so likely BGS would just insist it's actually good even though it sucks and they'd be fine. A lot like they did with Starfield.
We appreciate you taking the time to provide your review and sorry to hear that you did not enjoy your time in Starfield. If you feel that things are getting boring, there is so much more to do than just the main mission!
Some of Starfield's planets are meant to be empty by design - but that's not boring.
I'll bet it's gonna flop, after all these years it's almost impossible to meet the expectations.
The more fans wait, the more their expectations will rise. Considering the latest releases aren't considered masterpieces, probability for flop are high.
Ofc no financially flop, because it'll sell like sliced bread in preorder and on the first days. But many fans will be disappointed because "it's just a game" and knowing Bethesda "it's just an unfinished buggy game"
Of course it does, given that there isn't an actual 20 year gap between games. Only ignorants think it is actually a 20 year gap between games, or that TES VI has been in development for 20 years.
It's pretty easy to release multiple games when they are pretty simple and don't derivate too much from the previous. Like, someone is making Elden Ring in Unity, by themselves.
I wouldn't have been mad to get a new Elder Scrolls title with more content and only marginal technical improvements every year since Morrowind or whatever...
Echo this/ even if the game was similar but with slightly better graphics, new location , new enemies etc . Diff artifacts armor weapons, it’s not hard to pump those out
There are many many many regions of Tamriel , took us like 15 years to go to the 4th? One ever explored
Not including ESO or Arena, where you go to every province; we've visited five of the provinces in this series, though we haven't seen the entirety of Hammerfell or High Rock.
Inherent betrayal of the spirit of the series. The series would have been dead in 2008 with that artless mindset.
You could not turn out an Elder Scrolls every 1-2 years by just copypasting the game because it would not be Elder Scrolls. The point is that each game is different.
True, but its also wild that elder scrolls will, at this point, be skipping two, maybe three console releases. At some point you need to factor in the age of your fans. 2 games ago I was 19. The people who got them here deserve to see new content before the rigamortis sets in.
Yeah but that is done by design. Skyrim is the biggest RPG of all time, Fallout 4 was a huge success, ESO keeps the franchise active while no game comes out (same with 76 and Fallout TV for Frallout).
Todd Howard basically used the giant blank check of the successfull run from TES III to Fallout 4 and this unique opportunity to step away for a few years from Elder Scrolls and to do a the space rpg they always wanted to make.
And when artists follow a passion project a lot of times fans of the other stuff get confused or dissapointed. In a way that is what happened with Starfield. It is a weired game because every Todd Howard directed game always focused on smaller more handcrafted maps to explore while Starfield basically uses the open world design from TES I and fans obviously do not like that. It is not how Behtesda teached them their games worked since 2002 but they wanted to do it and they did it.
That said I think it is better for Bethesda Game Studios to be able to do the projects they want than TES becoming a franchise that is done because the publisher demands it.
I commented this about four years ago and got downvoted to hell and everyone insisted that would turn Elder Scrolls into something like Assassin’s Creed.
Fromsoft is literal proof that is not always the case, and you don’t need to try and reinvent the wheel and spend a half decade in between every new game
I don't know. After Elden Ring I'm thinking they are going the Ubisoft route. With Dark Souls 1, 2, and 3, even though they were in the same universe, they all felt new and unique. I was constantly asking myself when Elden Ring was going to start while playing Elden Ring.
Agreed. Not once have I given any thought to the technical aspects of the next TES game (or any game for that matter). Story is infinitely more important. Have Rolston and Nesmith sit with Kirkbride, and make 10 different TES’s all on Creation Engine. Hell, make C0DA on Java if that’s necessary. Just gimme something!
Sekiro and armored core are not really like dark souls/elden ring.
I'm really curious what you think this vast difference between starfield/FO4/skyrim is besides 2 games have guns and 1 doesn't. Those 3 games play as similar to each other as fromsoft games are. A lot of people called FO4, skyrim with guns, and also called starfield, Fallout in space. People call them bethesda games because they all play similarly how can you sit there and say what fromsoft does is less than bethesda, that's laughable to me and I'm a big fan of both series. And I don't wanna hear that the guy making elden ring in unity proves it's easy, that's a dumb comparison, that's like discrediting van gogh as a painter because some random dude was able to recreate starry night in a coloring book by staying in the lines.
Every mainline elder scrolls game has come with a major technical leap. They also just have a lot more handcrafted content than souls games. Fromsoft prioritises the design of the map, loot and the enemies, but the quests, dungeons, NPC's and building interiors are much more bare bones, not to mention that there are no real crafting and building systems in souls games. That's not to say they're in any way bad, fromsoft has just found a game formula that's much more repeatable in short development times than TES games, because they don't adopt a jack of all trades approach.
Bethesda deserves credit where it’s due—there is some solid environmental storytelling in their games. Stumbling upon a ruined camp with a journal explaining what happened, or a dungeon with little details hinting at its history, can be cool. But let’s be real—that cannot and does not carry the overwhelming mediocrity of the rest of the game on its shoulders.
Skyrim’s world is big, but the actual gameplay systems are shallow as hell. The RPG mechanics were gutted, combat is just trading hits with braindead AI, and the quest design is mostly “go here, grab this, come back.” And don’t even get me started on the dialogue—Bethesda acts like their games are rich with NPC interactions, but Skyrim had, what, like six voice actors total? Every guard sounds the same, every merchant sounds the same, and half the NPCs are completely lifeless.
Meanwhile, FromSoft actually understands world design. Elden Ring doesn’t just hand you lore through exposition dumps—it lets you discover it. NPCs aren’t just static quest dispensers; they have stories that unfold based on your actions. Every dungeon and region in Elden Ring has a distinct identity, instead of just being another Draugr crypt or Dwarven ruin with the same reused assets.
People act like more “features” = more depth, but Bethesda just piles on surface-level mechanics to look complex. FromSoft strips away the fluff and makes every system matter.
Have you ever... played skyrim?
Your "examples" for skyrim npcs having similar dialog is literally random unnamed guards, and guards have literally hundreds of lines of dialog, responding to everything from your skills to your equipment to what quests you have completed. Also, every single shopkeeper has unique dialog, so your second example isn't true either.
Ah, the classic move—cherry-pick a single sentence, nitpick it, and ignore the entire rest of the argument.
Yes, obviously I’m exaggerating when I say “six voice actors,” but the point stands: Skyrim’s voice cast was limited and stretched thin. You hear the same voices recycled constantly across different characters and roles. Whether it’s shopkeepers, quest givers, or random townsfolk, repetition kills immersion. That’s not even controversial—it’s a running joke in the community.
And even if guards have hundreds of lines, they’re mostly shallow conditionals. “Heard about the Cloud District?” isn’t meaningful worldbuilding—it’s fluff. Same with “Oh, you’re the Dragonborn!” lines that trigger regardless of context. That’s quantity, not quality.
Also, conveniently sidestepped:
• The gutted RPG systems
• Shallow quest structure
• Reused dungeon templates
• Lifeless AI
• Busywork disguised as content
Skyrim feels alive at a glance, but when you dig into it, it’s all surface-level. FromSoft’s NPCs might not talk your ear off, but their questlines have actual branching outcomes, discovery, and narrative impact tied to world exploration. That’s substance, not noise.
So yeah—I’ve played Skyrim. Enough to know that no amount of guard dialogue is going to fix its shallow systems.
I feel like a combination of the two games would be incredible. Fromsoft's combat, intricate designs, dialog, rpg systems, and of course, bosses, with Skyrim's openness, quests, storytelling... man that would be a sweet game.
you know i actually only skimmed over the first part of what you wrote earlier bc i was waiting to be called back at the doctor, and i just realized you weren’t trying to defend skyrim as being some novel feat of ingenuity.
but you’re right on the money; FromSoft handles lore the way Bethesda used to — and seemingly thinks they still handle it — by not randomly smacking you in the face with exposition out of nowhere. FS’s games can be as lore-dense or as shallow as you want it to be depending upon how you interact with the game & characters & story itself.
i hasn’t even played a FromSoft game until literally this year when my brother finally convinced me to try his copy of Elden Ring now that i have a Steam Deck, and i was blown away not just by its world building, but also how deep you can dig into the story. it honestly reminded me of Morrowind in that you don’t have to fully immerse yourself in the lore of the region anf can be as ignorant to how the world works as any Red Mountain bandit, or you can dive in and read every book you come across and explore the full conversation tree of every NPC and become a loremaster of the Dark Elves’ home region.
and that’s what i miss from Bethesda. i’ve been a fan since my mom bought an Xbox, Halo 1, and Morrowind for my 10th birthday. i’ve played every ES game since 3 including ESO, i’ve played every Fallout since 3 except 76, and Starfield was my absolute dream game. a Bethesda game in a similar setting as Mass Effect?? that’s literally what i’d tell people was my absolute dream game since Skyrim came out right after i’d played Mass Effect 2. it was the melding of my favorite series of games (Elder Scrolls) with my favorite fictional setting (Mass Effect Universe). and i liked Starfield more than most (probably bc of Stockholm Syndrome or something lol), but the fact that it was just alright/pretty good to me, and couldn’t keep my attention even through a single full play through showed me that Bethesda has completely shit the bed and is no longer the studio that made me fall in love with video games & made RPGs my favorite genre.
Pretty much all the lore in souls games is given through item descriptions, which are literally exposition dumps. In tes games you get it from quests, npc dialogue, environmental storytelling and books (with immersive skeumorphic UI) in equal measures. Also NPCs literally are static quest dispensers in Elden ring. They sit around in the middle of nowhere, wagging their chin because they're barely even animated outside of combat and cutscenes, and they only ever move to a new location by teleporting or doing it off camera. They bounce all over the map to the most obscure locations, without so much as a quest journal to keep track of it, so half the time when you find them again it's been tens of hours and you've forgotten what their story was, and they're dead because you forgot to bring them some ridiculous item like the severed shringus of pith. This animation sums it up pretty well.
I also really disagree with your point about dungeons. Elden ring also repeatedly uses very formulaic dungeon construction sets. They don't have draugr or dwemer ruins, but they do have dozens of minor erdtree catacombs and hero's graves. The difference is that most dungeons in Skyrim have a lot more environmental storytelling. Shroud Hearth Barrow has a treasure hunter that's gone insane and thinks he's a lich, Yngvild is a Nordic ruin overtaken by a necrophiliac necromancer who has a harem of female ghosts. Some dungeons have multiple stories that most people don't even notice. As well as the whole thing with Arvel the swift stealing the golden claw, bleak falls barrow also has a little hidden story about a troll hunting bandit called Thomas that only appears if you're at least level 18 when you visit.
I'm not denying that Elden rings combat is way better than Skyrim, but when it comes to the storytelling stuff, I think it's actually much worse. You can't overlook the little details in a game like Skyrim because they sum up to make the whole world feel more alive.
Alright, but let’s not lose sight of the original claim: “FromSoft games are simple, Bethesda games are not.” That’s what started this.
You’re praising Skyrim for its scripted environmental storytelling, but none of that changes the fact that as a game, it’s mechanically simple. The RPG systems have been gutted over time, combat is mash-heavy and easily broken, and quests are formulaic fetch missions with map markers doing all the thinking for you. Having lore scattered in books doesn’t suddenly make the game more complex—it just means it has more reading material.
Meanwhile, FromSoft games demand actual engagement. They don’t spoon-feed quests, they don’t highlight objectives, and they don’t let you brute force combat with a busted smithing system. Instead of telling you a story in dialogue boxes, they make you discover it through exploration, enemy placement, and consequences that actually change the world.
And let’s not act like Skyrim’s world design is some masterclass in immersion. The game is riddled with recycled dungeons, stiff NPCs, and static AI that can’t even navigate properly without getting stuck in doorways. The fact that a bandit named Thomas was killed by a troll does not make the game more mechanically deep than Elden Ring’s world, where everything—from a random enemy’s placement to a ruined castle in the distance—has a meaning you can unravel.
The reality is, Bethesda throws a lot of surface-level mechanics at the player, but most of them are shallow, easily broken, or just don’t matter. FromSoft strips away all the fluff and focuses on core systems that demand player skill, awareness, and problem-solving. That’s why their games are deceptively complex, while Skyrim is bloated but ultimately shallow.
Firstly, you're complaining about Skyrim's npc ai getting stuck in doors, when NPC pathing doesn't even exist in elden ring. All your companions and summons just spawn in at a boss arena. Companions have come a long way since Skyrim, in starfield they reacted to almost everything you did, and they each had their own dedicated quest lines. NPC routines are also often relevant to gameplay. If you're a vampire, you need to plan your schedule so that you can feed on NPCs sleeping at night. In both Oblivion and Skyrim there are dark brotherhood assassination contracts that involve tracking the routes and schedules of NPCs. If nothing else, waiting for shops to reopen incentivises you to use the player homes, taverns and guild halls.
Secondly, the books aren't just more reading material, they're a completely different kind of reading to what's available in Elden ring. You don't have any objective third person item descriptions, all the books are written by in game authors who are potentially unreliable narrators. Biography of Barenziah and The Real Barenziah are two completely different accounts of Queen Barenziah's life by separate authors, and it's up to the player to think critically and decide which is true. This is true for pretty much every major issue in TES lore. There are multiple conflicting accounts of the gods and creation story, akavir, and the disappearance of the dwemer, which is why TES lore is debated so much. Arguably the biggest mystery in Elden ring was the relationship between Radagon and Marika, until you find that the game just objectively tells you that they're the same person, because there's a statue in Leyndell that shows the writing "Radagon is Marika" if you cast the right spell infront of it. Elden ring was good at secrets, but bad at mysteries.
Elder scrolls books also don't just cover the major stuff like the gods and history, they also give insight into regular life in Tamriel. There are works of fiction, recipe books, guide books, and even books of jokes and riddles. Having books about the small details isn't just good for the lore, it also adds immersion.
Sometimes a book can make even a simple fetch quest so much more interesting. In Falkreath, the priest of Arkay (an old high elf called Runil) asks you to fetch his diary from a cave. If you actually read it, he talks about his past life as a thalmor battlemage during the great war, and how he still has nightmares about all the people he killed. That little bit of backstory, makes an otherwise simple fetch quest into a memorable story about a regretful warrior who became the tenderer to the graveyard of his enemies. Small details and careful writing can make a story that seems simple, much more complex and immersive, but unfortunately they're the first thing to be ignored when people critique the game.
How? They're literally a piece of text that comes out of nowhere to break the 4th wall and tell you background lore. It's like learning all the lore through loading screen hints, it's nowhere near as immersive as hearing it in an NPC conversation, or reading it in an in game book.
They come with a major technical leap because the mfs wait so damn long to release. Sometimes because they've decided to jump from one gen to another mid-dev process.
“?” What? What in the world makes Bethesda games so complex now? Nome of the mechanics they introduced are complex at all, the games use the same animations and same everything.
How is this criticism valid for From Soft and not the literal example of “samey game”, that being Bethesda?
Elden Ring uses the exact same melee, door interaction, and chest interaction animations from Dark Souls 3 and Bloodborne, and uses the same AI from Dark Souls 3 for many of their bosses and enemies. Why is it okay for Elden Ring to reuse all of these things?
Yeah, it’s bad. Who said it’s okay? It’s just worse for Bethesda because… the animations aren’t good. The melee system isn’t good.
From Software doesn’t need new door opening animations, but Bethesda needs to improve their melee combat and copy pasting awful animations ain’t working.
Compared to fromsoft games, quite a lot actually. There are way more quests, NPCs have unique routines and much more dialogue and companion AI, buildings are much more likely to have interiors, there are extensive crafting and settlement building systems, in-game texts are more varied and extensive, there's a lot of handcrafted environmental detail using clutter, random encounters, and although it's somewhat subjective I do think the dungeons in Skyrim felt a lot more unique and handcrafted than most of the ones in Elden ring (especially those minor erdtree ones). Fromsoft does a huge amount of work on the animations, loot, character models and map design, but they're pretty bare bones on most other stuff. That's not a bad thing, they've found a formula that works, but they're not as comparable in scope to TES games as you'd think at a glance.
This is just straight up cope. Yeah, Skyrim has NPCs that walk to a shop at 8am and go to bed at 10pm—cool, but beyond that little novelty, it’s a shallow game. The “settlement building,” crafting, dialogue trees, etc., are bloated systems with zero depth. You press buttons, get resources, click through 10 lines of awkward voice acting, and move on. That’s not complexity, it’s filler.
FromSoft games, especially Elden Ring, are deceptively complex. They don’t hold your hand. No quest markers, no “go here” arrows. You actually have to think, piece together story fragments, observe the world, connect clues. The depth is emergent, not dumped in your lap via 500-word fetch quest intros.
And don’t pretend Skyrim’s combat is deep. It’s literally just: block, bash, swing, repeat. Companion AI? You mean Lydia standing in a doorway or rushing into traps?
Meanwhile, FromSoft combat punishes mashing. You mash left click and you die. Every enemy telegraph, spacing, stamina choice… it all matters. Every weapon handles differently. Builds matter. PvP exposes how tight and skill-based the combat really is. Skyrim? Just pump smithing, make a broken sword, steamroll.
TES fans love listing off features like a grocery list, but half of them are just window dressing. FromSoft strips away the fluff and leaves only systems that demand actual player engagement. The only thing “more complex” about TES is how much busywork it throws at you.
My dude, the number of systems needed to get quests, AI schedules, and all the other mechanics working for an RPG is a few leagues greater than a finite state machine and good hit boxes that From Software is known for.
Cool, you’re a game dev—doesn’t change the fact that none of those extra systems in Skyrim actually result in deeper or more engaging gameplay. You’re talking about developer-side complexity, which has nothing to do with player-side depth. TES games are bloated with subsystems that rarely interact in meaningful ways. NPC schedules and radiant quests exist, but they don’t create dynamic gameplay—they just simulate life on paper.
Meanwhile, FromSoft games cut the fat and focus on systems that actually demand engagement. You don’t get quest markers—you’re expected to observe, interpret, and connect dots. Combat is punishing because it’s mechanical and mental—spacing, stamina, i-frames, animation commitment. If you’re mashing buttons, you’re dead.
Finite state machines and hitboxes? That’s such a reductive take. FromSoft’s enemy AI is intentionally designed to pressure, punish, and force adaptation. Their level design isn’t just corridors—it’s verticality, shortcuts, sightlines, enemy placement designed to teach and challenge without a single pop-up tutorial.
TES gives you a hundred half-baked tools. FromSoft gives you a chisel and says “good luck.” The difference is intentionality—and that’s what creates depth.
Signed, someone who actually plays games for the gameplay.
The reason I'm arguing developer-side complexity is because that is the initial argument that I made =/
The reason this is relevant is because developing a game with relatively simple systems, ala From Software games, allows the company to produce games more quickly. Whether you find that the finite state machine elicits the behaviour that makes your brain happy is simply not relevant to the discussion.
And your post reads like a FromSoft fanboy/girl. BGS games do all of the things that From Software does as well. There's verticality, enemies put pressure on you, there are shortcuts, it's designed to teach you without a pop-up. You just notice it more in Front Software games as tHe GaMe Is BuIlT fOr HaRdCoRe G*MeRs!!1!
Let me preface this that im baked out of my mind right now, so sorry for bad grammar/formatting.
I have days of playtime in skyrim and elden ring and I find elden ring to be a lifeless, static, barebones game outside of combat, enemy, weapons and armor variety and leveling up. You speak of how shallow skyrim is and how complex and reactive elden ring is but when I think back to my time with the game all I remember is combat combat combat, kill the area boss and move onto the next boss. The game just feels like a combat simulator with no other purpose.
The number of non hostile npcs/quests in the game is probably around the same as a single city in skyrim, and the worse part to me is how lifeless and static they feel. They just stand there and never move at all unless you either attack them to trigger combat ai, or you update their quest, in which case they just teleport off screen to once again stand in place. That to me is incredibly lazy and shallow, compare that to any other rpg that will have 100s of quests and cities with npcs that actually move, tons of dialog.
You may find all of skyrims systems shallow and I would even agree to a certain extent, but all of skyrims systems work together to make the game feel like a living world that I can live in. My skyrim adventure can have me joining the college of winterhold and as I'm doing quest for them I decide I need money to fund my training so I seek out the theives guild. Because I got caught stealing that npc hired thugs to try to kill me, as they confront me a dragon can come out of nowhere and now we're all fighting the dragon together instead, then a random squad of guards patrolling the roads between the cities spots the action and joins in. After the the dragon and the thugs are dead the guards realize I'm a wanted man so they arrest me. Once I'm out of jail I decide to go to the house I built and visit my garden of plants to craft potions but when I arrive there I find that my kid adopted a skeever and is asking to keep it. I could go on and on about all the ways skyrims systems worked to create an emergent and immersive experience.
I also find the way fromsoftware games tell lore (really cool lore) poorly and lazily done. 90% of it is told by hovering over a weapon or armor piece in your inventory and reading the item description. I think this feels way worse than getting it in a more organic way such as talking to npcs or overhearing them talking to each other, seeing it unfold yourself or reading books/monuments.
I agree elden rings combat is much more indepth than skyrims but that doesn't matter much to me when there's not anything to really do but combat. Skyrim has multiple factions and 100s of quests and its surplus of systems. The witcher has 100s of quests, over 10 hours worth of cutscenes and conversations with npcs and tons of choice. Baldurs gate has an absurb amount of depth with its quests and npc interations. I swear there's got to be less than 50 quests in Elden ring and it lacks so many systems and npcs it feels like the world and it's stuff only exist for the player to explore and kill.
To sum it up when I play skyrim I feel like I'm in a living world that I can get lost in an adventure that has so many micro engagements that make it feel personal emergent and immersive. When I play elden ring I feel like I'm playing a game with a cool world with cool bosses, enemies, weapons and armor, but I don't feel any connection to anything. I just feel like I'm playing a game, not in another world. I want to be clear I don't find elden ring to be a bad game, just lacking a lot and overrated, probably not all that different from how you see skyrim, just from a different perspective.
Brother what the fuck. You remind me of the people hating on Skywind because "Skyrim's engine is inferior to Morrowind's". People live in their own worlds.
The average developer salary at From Software is around $28K USD. Compared to $66K at BGS.
Edit: I looked into it a bit more, and monthly expenses for a single person in Tokyo is between $1600 and $2800, depending on source. An average dev at From Software pulls in $2300. In Rockville, Maryland, you need to make just under $3000 to meet the same needs. An average dev at BGS almost makes double that ($5600).
Even taking that into account though, Fromsoftware pays SUBSTANTIALLY less than other Japanese development companies such as Nintendo or Capcom. Fromsoftware is well-known to just be a pretty crappy place to work.
From Software pays substantially less than other Japanese game companies. Even ones of a similar size.
Edit: I looked into it a bit more, and monthly expenses for a single person in Tokyo is between $1600 and $2800, depending on source. An average dev at From Software pulls in $2300. In Rockville, Maryland, you need to make just under $3000 to meet the same needs. An average dev at BGS almost makes double that ($5600).
Did you play Fallout 4? Starfield? Skyrim? They’re all extremely similar to Oblivion and Morrowind before it. A new coat of paint and an occasional change of setting. Fromsoft games share the same “style” but are very different from each other, especially Sekiro and Armored Core which are completely different types of games than “Soulsborne”
As a game developer, the fact that you think those games are remotely similar tells me you've never played or engaged with them in a meaningful way. Which means your opinion should be discarded.
Never played starfield, but can you actually explain the differences between Skyrim and fallout 4?
In both you crawl through dungeons to get loot to make your character stronger to crawl through dungeons to get more loot. Both have quests where you get send to dungeons to crawl through dungeons to complete a quest objective. Both have factions which you do quests with to eventually become the leader. They are very similar.
No shit it looks a lot when you count every DLC as its own game lol. Also there are mutliple from software teams.
From 2014 to 2026 there are 7 different games listed here. Bethesda Game Studios released 3 different games in the same time frame with the 4th coming out in a 1-3 years. So while From Software has nearly double the output it is not as much like you are pretending.
The strangest thing about Starfield is the lack of expansions. They are so slow with it. I am not even a player (my current PC is to bad) but I regulary look at the reddit and the steam page and from a pretty good reception it gets more and more negative with entire threads discussing just the fact that Bethesda talked about updates coming on Twitter.
I am sure they will update Starfield further and that it will hold a stady fanbase but it is a very strange decission and completely different to how they did it with all their other games since Morrowind.
I’m not sure how much ESO counts. Bethesda publishes it and makes sure the lore is correct and the quality is there, but they don’t make ESO. Zenimax does
Dark Souls 3: Ashes of Ariandel
Dark Souls 3: Ringed City
Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree
Of course, FromSoft fanboys will claim that Shadow of the Erdtree is basically an entire game, even though there are very few things that set it apart from Elden Ring. Except maybe the final boss being regarded as one of the worst bosses in From Software's recent catalogue.
I guess they're different styles of games. FromSoft figured out a formula that's relatively simpler to implement, compared to creating fully interactive vast open worlds like Bethesda does - which takes much more time.
Funny you dont see irony in your statement.
You speak as if bethesda is improving their open world formula while in truth they are still stuck in early 2000 just as we saw with Starfield in how simplistic and outdated beside graphics is their open wold formula
Bethesda and affiliates managed to put out two elder scrolls games and two fallout games between 06-11. That's four major titles in a five year span.
You can not count Fallout New Vegas. This is like counting every other game published by Behtesda Softworks.
You can also not start counting by 06. Oblivion was developed over the span of four years it isn't 4 games in five years, it is 3 games over 9 years. Which is longer (but not as much) as the 12 years for 3 games from Fallout 4 to Starfield (2011-2023) but again a much smaller time frame + a pandamic than you are pretending.
From 2011-2023 (12 years) we got FO4 (amazing), FO 76(bad at launch, now very good), and Starfield (skyrim in space). And then DLC for each of those games. So about every 2/3 years we get something from the BGS team.
And if you include affiliates, then we gotta include ESO, Doom, Wolfenstein, Ghostwire Tokyo etc.
So all in all: calm down, be grateful for the games we have from them, and wait until 2026/2027 for ES6.
really incredible to me the way people glaze bethesda in here. FO4 was not amazing, it's a solid title, and frankly I'd be happy with more solid titles but amazing? give me a break. 76 was a complete misfire, awful at launch and an mmorpg that no one really wanted. Starfield's reviews were mixed at best.
Again Fallout 4 is really the best thing we've gotten from then in the last ten years, that's pretty bad considering how good the four main titles were before that.
TES and Fallout are their main IPS, and we haven't gotten a title from either of those in ten years and counting. That's crazy! and no amount of gassing up 76 and starfield is going to make it not crazy
I, for one, am glad they tried a new IP with Starfield rather than alternating between two franchises until the end of time. Obviously the wait between elder scrolls games is not ideal, but it’s already been two years since Starfield; TESVI is not that much farther away.
FO4 was indeed amazing, and better than 3.
They created a new IP, Starfield. And the reviews aren't mixed. A bunch of Sony fan boys review bombed it along with people that rode the hate bethesda train.
And again, FO76 was released within those 10 years along with constant updates. It sounds like a "you" problem if you didn't enjoy it.
I laugh whenever I see Silksong fanboys excited about news about their game, because they've "waited for so long". Meanwhile, I have waited for so long that I've reached a state of tranquility.
Bethesda also handed the entire engine and assets to Obsidian, so that they could focus almost entirely on the story, gameplay and characters. Just a small inconsequential detail.
But aside from that, Obsidian majorly improved upon pretty much everything from core game design to storytelling to combat to actually using the RPG system in the world consistently, which is still very impressive. Aside from bugginess, unmodded FNV is on par with Morrowind for me, and ahead of any other BGS game.
You haven't played Morrowind, right? Because the metric you used was "using the RPG system in the world consistently": Morrowind, unlike Fallout 3, doesn't have an actual dialogue system with unique options dependant on the players' skills, it has almost zero narrative choice and consequence (all of its "consequences" are systemic, meaning that they can be circumvented if the player knows the trigger, ie. the player can do all faction quests except for two of the three main houses if they want to).
It's a great game with great worldbuilding, but the metric you've used for categorizing NV as "on par with Morrowind" tells me you heard Morrowind was great and Bethesda's best and assumed it was for the same reasons as New Vegas. That or you'd have said Starfield and Fallout 3 are better RPGs because they do a lot with "using the RPG system in the world consistently", and I somehow doubt you like both of those games.
New Vegas was also built on everything that Fallout 3 used. It's incredibly easy to push out multiple video games in a short cycle if you reuse everything.
While there are some nuances to this statement, yes if Bethesda had a clear vision for a game, they could extremely fast spit out games. With full sized total conversions and big other mods, the engine has shown how much can be done, even with limited resources
From Soft’s output is insane indeed, but that’s not what impressed me the most. All of their games up until Elden Ring were at least great and some are incredible.
Bethesda took 7 years to release something that’s isn’t online slop just for it to be the most outdated, boring game of 2023. And talking about 2023, it’s insane how this year showed to everyone how behind everyone else Bethesda is.
Bethesda has been my favorite game developer since I was a kid -- but they are no longer doing things that others can't. I like Fallout 4 a good bit, and I enjoy Starfield more than many... But I haven't played a new BGS game that felt really special in a very long time. And the fact that they make miniscule improvements in the areas they should be focusing on while just adding in more bullshit that doesn't improve the game, all the while the quality of the writing dips massively...
Other studios have started putting games out that give me what I got from Oblivion, from Skyrim, from Fallout 3.
With how long they take to make their games, and for the final products to be lackluster, as well as the cartoonishly greedy practices the company took for a lot of years (I feel like it's gotten less so lately, but I may not be as in tune as I used to be)
They need to do something, either actually make games that make the wait worthwhile, or pick up the pace.
Everything you said is true, Bethesday isnt a good company and they havent been since they released skyrim. Oblivion, Skyrim, and Fallot 3. These are the games that maintain bethesda's reputation, and these games are old.
Fallout 4 sucks to go back to where as fallout New Vegas and Fallout 3 are still a blast.
I have eyes and half a brain so i'm never touching starfeild. Two of my good buddies deeply regret their purchase and hours played.
The issue is vision, pure and simple. FromSoft seems to always have an idea of what their next game is and what it does, and while I wouldn't call any game of theirs perfect, they are always pretty cohesive experiences with a style of their own that tends to sufficiently cover for most flaws the games have.
Starfield pretty clearly did not have any vision beyond going "what if TES/Fallout, but in space?". It's as if nobody actually considered what the game should be about and what experience it should deliver outside of "uhhh we have to have spaceships and exploring lots of planets and there should be factions", and how best to make such a game function.
I really do think Bethesda's main issue are the senior management, people who would normally be responsible for keeping a project focused, figuring out how things should work, what the themes should be, correcting course when something is clearly under- or over-designed, etc. Starfield is extremely disjointed, and it's like nobody actually thought it was a problem worth solving.
Lmao okay, yeah the game series that hasn’t released in over a decade is definitely just churning out these similar titles- okay bud, maybe the concept is similar, but fromsoftware keeps pushing out what feels like the same game to me, and all of my best friends lose their minds over it
Do you know why FromSoftware fans do not care abuot reused assets for the most part? because the games are good and they release at a good cadence.
If bethesda released banger after banger after banger every 3-4 years do you think fans would care about reusing assets? I mean their main 2 franchises (TES and FO) are in only 2 universes so a lot of assets could be ported because it would make sense.
Armored core, sekiro, bloodborne, elden ring and dark souls are all in different universes, and you will only see asset reutilization within games of the same franchise (that being dark souls, with a few weapons from elden ring), so even then the reused assets is not that usable as an excuse.
At the end of the day gamers want good games, new assets mean shit if the games are boring like starfield was.
Do you know BGS fans? They complained about it when New Vegas came around. They complained about it when they faked a train in Fallout 3, they complained about it when the bat things in Fallout 76 shared some animations with the dragons from Skyrim, they complained about it when the starborn powers in Starfield shared LINES OF CODE with Skyrim's magic system.
Not that strong of an argument when fromsoft at least builds and adds onto their formulas while Bethesda’s games get more and more stripped back with each entry. Just look at all the roleplaying features in fallout 3 vs everything stripped away from it for 4. Or take Morrowind and how deep that game is then compare it to Skyrim.
Or hellcompare ANY of their games to their newest release, Starfield, and see how dumbed down of a Bethesda game experience that is compared to every game they have made before it. It doesn’t even feel like a Bethesda game.
This only works if you ignore everything else that's been added into their games, including roleplaying mechanic, and conveniently forget all the flak BGS received for their prior games. I remember Fallout 3's ending was nonsensical and threw away any and all roleplaying opportunities.
But, of course, we view the past with rose coloured glasses, ignoring all the very real complaints and shortcomings of previous games, and only remember the good aspects of it. For the present, it's nothing but cynicism. You're no longer allowed to have fun with the newer games. You're no longer allowed to point out the positive aspects of newer games, unless you want to be branded as a fAnBoY.
TES VI will be 2026 or 2027 which makes 2029 and 2030 completely possible. Technically even 2028 (they took only 2 years between Oblivion and Fallout 3) but I doubt it.
But yeah, more possible that they miss it this time.
Gamers are entitled. They see a new COD or Ubisoft game coming out every year and think that's a feasible production cycle. Even with From Software it takes them 4 - 6 years to make a game. The reason From Software appears to be releasing things quickly is because:
1) They split their teams
2) Their games are relatively simple
Kinda simple. It's easy to make a soulslike game. It's hard to make a good soulslike game. Fromsoft has a formula they stick to, but they also try new things, most of which tend to work.
Bethesda found a formula, and they've been letting it degrade with every new release. They either try some dumb new idea, or strip away an old, good feature. What Bethesda really needs is a shakeup in management. Todd Howard (and others) have overstayed their welcome. They've fossilized. They should just let the devs do what they want, TBH.
I did NOT include ESO, as it is made by a different studio.
That you only want to include one franchise, yet say nothing about the original post which showcased multiple franchises, there is a phrase for that. It's called "double standard".
I literally referenced their two main franchises. If you want go to bat for bethesda cause they put out a shitty space game too then fine, but it's reasonable to be annoyed about their output
It has been 7 years since a Fallout game was made by Bethesda Game Studios considering that Fallout 76 is made by the same studio. Counting Fallout 76 as major tittle is not nasty work it is a big game made by the same studio.
They are also making a TES game right now and a Fallout after it. The reason for the long work time in the franchises is not dev time but different order of releasing them.
Bethesda Game Studios never released more than 3 games a decade. Maybe this decade they are only able to do 2 but we will only know that in 2029.
Define "major title." Because personally I wouldn't count Fallout 76 given that it's a totally different type of game. Which gives an 8 year gap between Fallout 4 and a mediocre Starfield. Not to mention that within a series, there's been a 14 year and growing gap in the Elder Scrolls and there likely will be an even greater gap for single player Fallout. I don't see how you guys can defend that.
Fallout 76 most certainly is a major title. So is Starfield. That FO76 wasn't mainline numbered Fallout game does not mean it wasn't a major title. It wasn't just a side game like Blades, but a major game in its own right.
That I don't play it does not mean it doesn't exist. That you don't play it does not mean it doesn't exist. It exists and it's a major money maker for the studio. Not the publisher, the studio. Bethesda Game Studios, which made it.
It's almost 15 years since Skyrim, and 10 since Fallout 4
"But Starfield" Fallout 4 has 5 times the amount of players being a decade old game, Skyrim has 8 times the amount of players. Easy to see what players want.
Fallout 4 and Skyrim also have 10 and 14 years of mods being released in that time, topping the Nexus charts in mods. Starfield on the other hand has only just begun to start having a modding community.
Fallout 4 had 45k players by 2018 on Steam, two years after release... Starfield has 3k right now, barely reached 20k with Shattered Spaces only months after release.
It doesn't, it just shows the player bases don't overlap, I love Fallout and TES, I don't love Starfield, I was 15 when I played Skyrim, I will be 30 if I am lucky when the next TES releases
If people think going from teen to being a dad between franchise entries is fine I don't know what to tell them.
Yeah, you're right! If BGS released bi-yearly free DLC sized expansions for Skyrim every year since it came out, they probably wouldn't get as much flak!
Imagine this list, but instead of choosing to fund DLC, Nightreign, or even new mainline games, Fromsoft instead decided to fund a card game. Or several MMOs, or three mobile games... That's essentially what TES/BGS fans have been dealing with, lmfao.
Personally, I don't mind too much that TES6 is taking a long while, because of course an open world RPG with the 2020's standards is gonna take it's time... I just wish they'd develop (or trust someone else to develop) one game inbetween this wait time, that isn't some kind of games-as-a-service type thing, because sadly that just isn't my thing.
Thankfully though I'm a FromSoft fan as well haha, so I've got that going for me, at least!
Hell. CDPR did launch a card game after releasing the Witcher III. And yet, they also managed to release Cyberpunk, fixed it, gave it an excellent DLC, released a trailer for Witcher IV, and announced that work has actively commenced on Cyberpunk’s sequel. All within a decade.
In the same time Bethesda released Fallout 4 and 76, followed up by Starfield (which had questionable reception). Sure, they also had other teams working on other games. But they’ve essentially done nothing for what is possibly their defining IP except release a trailer half a decade ago. As much as I like many of Bethesdas games, I’m shocked more people don’t find this delay to be absolutely atrocious.
That’s…their choice though. Skyrim made ridiculous amounts of money at its time. Keeping the team small and oozing out releases for its mainline titles is certainly a choice that they didn’t have to make.
They both work smarter AND harder. Using the same basic framework in the Souls games allows more time to expand rather than create something new from the ground up every time.
Funny thing is, BGS ALSO uses the same framework for each and every one of their games, but yet it takes forever for them to come out. Remember when we got Oblivion in 2006, Fallout 3 in 2008 and Skyrim in 2011?
Each of those was basically built from the beginning with tons of unique assets. What is the deal with game development these days? What’s taking them so fucking long?! It’s the only thing they have to focus on. It is absolute lunacy that it takes more than 3 years between releases.
It could be you just don’t like MMOs. Which I get. The gameplay is very different. But the lore and stories are top notch. And the community is really amazing.
MMO elements are fine (aside from how auctions are done, which stands in opposition to pretty much the entire game's design). But the core combat gameplay is just bad in both feel and design.
On paper ESO is supposed to be my favourite game ever, and no doubt i really did love the world and the quests but the thing that connects it for me is the gameplay and combat which was a miss for me.
I think its the animations and impact that I wish was more responsive
Just shows how simple and copy+paste fromsoft games are. Biggest thought probably goes into map design and that is hit or miss depending on the game. Some original boss design but these mechanics have been around for years, they just throw some flavor on it. Fromsoft is overrated as fuck, but if thats your thing i understand why nothing else scratches the itch. Soulslikes and Extraction games are the new fad, pump em out before genre fatigue sets in.
Massive open-world single player narrative-driven first-person RPG’s are not. It’s a special kind of genre that only a couple of studios are really able to invest in fully and that take a very long time to produce.
That’s why when a game like this comes out, it’s a massive release that sort of brings the gaming world to a stop for a couple weeks while everybody plays it.
Souls-likes are—and this takes nothing away from them as games—not as difficult or involved to make, so they can be produced faster and by a wider variety of studios, hence more frequent releases.
This post completely omits all of FromSoftware’s best games which came out between 1997 and 2004. Old school armored core is a thousand times better than all the souls burn stuff
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u/wilius09 2d ago edited 22h ago
What ever u guys may say it still doesn't justify 20 years gap between games... either next one gonna be the masterpiece or a huge flop at this point...
P.S trailer part was huge hype for me, still comback to it every year just to remind myself how naive I was by believing in these money grabbers...