All you have to do is make it more like Morrowind with some updated mechanics. The world doesn’t have to be huge; smaller, handcrafted one is preferred to huge, lifeless one. Set it in an interesting, alien province, not generic medieval like Oblivion and Skyrim. And for the love of God, move on from Gamebryo/Creation engine, it’s been outdated for over a decade.

It wouldn’t be hard to meet my expectations, just don’t be worse than Skyrim. Skyrim already was a watered down mostly boring experience, surely you can match that or, god forbid, do better.

Bethesda has already run up against the wall of insurmountable expectations with Starfield, which by most measures was good but not great. That’s resulted in a sub-60% user rating on Steam and a general sense that the game was somehow a failure—or at the very least, a fumble.

Ah no. The problem with Starfield is mostly that they didn’t know where to go with it.

Bethesda: we made an engine we intend on using FOREVER and now that microsuck owns us we’re bound to limiting the capabilities of the engine to work on the Xbox toaster exdition, plus of course we’re a greedy lazy corporation that only cares about extracting every last penny from our IPs. SO WHY DON’T YOU WORSHIP US!?

I expect it to be mediocre, but saved by mods eventually.

Bethesda should just focus on making great modding tools for the modders 😂

My expectation is it will follow the trend of getting worse so meeting mine should be an easy enough bar. For real though if they can just make it feel like an alien world and not medieval with magic I’d be at least content. My unrealistic elder scrolls dream is for a landfall game where the player is just some civilian and you’re running from and watching all the bat-shittery that’s going on

All they need to do is bigger better Skyrim with different story. Keep all the lore, sidewuests, NPCs having their own lives, and beautiful map. Don’t dumb down the gameplay systems, make them accessible and/or configurable if you want but don’t dumb them down.

I don’t buy Bethesda games anymore esp if they are owned by micro-shit.

The worst of the corporate slop

Big budget studios love to just remake old content. They hate original ideas. So they should go back to fantastic games like Morrowind and Daggerfall and Skyrim and make them less annoying, prettier, hey put all the old stuff into the Skyrim framework, at least! Shame no one had thought of that.

/s

(Skywind, I think, and Skyblivion?)

skyrim bethesda is not the same thing as starfield bethesda

Skyrim, Red Dead Redemption 2 and The Last of Us really spoiled me with environmental immersion and story, so every game played after is just disappointing.

Bethesda essentially must build a close as possible simulation to a fantasy reality on a map the real life size of Poland in Unreal Engine 5 with a story like the first five seasons of Game of Thrones or it will fail.

I mean, I don’t know what to tell you, after Fallout 76 and Starfield I’d say expectations are well and truly tempered.

I don’t want to appear dismissive, the bar for triple A RPGs is insane, but it’s been long enough that I think meeting the scope of the few good Bethesda ones that everyone remembers would very much satisfy people, at least if they looked good and played well, which would be a Bethesda first.