We got 4 mainline games in the first 18 years, which works out to a game every 4.5 years on average. We have been getting ports and remasters of a single game for the remaining 12 years. Idk what happened over there. Did the main TES devs just burn out? If so why all the ports and rereleases? Maybe they’re just sticking a revolving door of interns on those?
Edit - Oh I guess the TES mmo. Still though.
Then as a holdover we get Starfield, which pretty much shows there isn’t any creative talent allowed to breathe over there. My hopes for a solid future entry to the TES series died.
The original ES creators are long gone. At one point one of them even said he’s happy the company is successful but the games are not games he would have made.
Thier lore guy left after Oblivion.
Todd and Pete Hines have said before their goal is to streamline everything in each game more than the last. That also leads into their you must be able to win everything philosophy that dumbs each game down even further.Thankfully there’s ESO. They actually have good writers on that. It’s probably the last good elder scrolls game, unless something drastic changes within Bethesda.
TES is dead. The Bethesda that made it is long gone.
Huh. I’ll be damned. I thought it had been longer than that. I remember buying and playing Arena when it first came out. I think that only one that I’ve missed entirely was the MMO and Redguard.
As far as story, I still think that Morrowind was the strongest; I’d like to see them go back to that style of play–with the vastly more complicated leveling and deeper lore–but with an open world and non-shitty graphics.
I won’t even think being as complicated as Mirroring for leveling is necessary. Re-add attributes and skills, give favorite skills unique bonuses, level off of the the growth of skills, give a flat number of attribute points per level regardless of what skills you leveled, keep perks because those are fun and as variety.