Finally, I can’t wait for a new fresh face to over promise me games.
He’s 52, if it takes 8 years before ES6 comes out He’ll be 60. If they milk this one as hard as they did Skyrim he’ll be long dead before ES7. Hell, I might be dead before ES7
After he dies, he will wake up in the afterlife, and hear a familiar voice say “hey, you’re finally awake”.
Thank you for making me spit out my water XD
8 years before ES6
why has the lord forsaken us
Yeah and after ES6 they might do a Fallout 5. If that also takes 10 years he’ll retire before it will be released.
I know Todd is kind of a silly guy and people have mixed opinions on him. But it will be pretty weird to be in a gaming industry without him. Like him or not dude is a legend
like Reggie “My body is ready” Fils-Aime
Yeah, I can’t help but laugh at the man (in a good way) whenever I see him on the screen. I’m sure it’s for the best that he leaves the stage, but I know I’m going to miss him.
I’m very excited about him not seagulling every single project. From what I’ve heard (and you can see based on their game releases) he’s an utterly incompetent manager.
Name any other game that comes close to the scale and freedom of Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion or Skyrim.
No other game developers even try to compete. Kingdom Come: Deliverance is probably the closest.
I honestly don’t think Skyrim is that good. It’s an open world sandbox, with little else. They removed the spellcrafting from the previous games. Speechcraft has pretty much zero impact on any sort of role-playing situation, and the dialogue options you have are more or less always irrelevant. Did you know there’s a civil war going on in Skyrim? It’s so inconsequential I keep forgetting about it. The “radiant quest” system they touted is really just a list of randomised fetch quests and not at all as interesting as they initially promised. NPCs are also oddly dead in comparison to Oblivion, and even Morrowind.
I get that it’s a game that many are fond of, but I think it’s a let down compared to Oblivion, which in turn is a let down compared to Morrowind. Sure I had fun in Skyrim, but I don’t think it’s a good game.
Did you know that the reason Oblivion has such awful voice acting (despite the terrific voice actors) is because the voice actors weren’t given a script? They were given a long list of voice lines in alphabetic order.
Fallout New Vegas was an excellent RPG, with a well thought through plot and appealing characters that had depth. None of Bethesda’s recent games have had that. To be fair New Vegas isn’t even Bethesda.
Thus I’m really looking forward to someone else taking the lead. I’d love to truly enjoy a Bethesda game again.
Yeah, that wouldn’t surprise me. He helped shape TES into what it is today, but he seems like a chronic “ideas guy” and I suspect the dev team succeeds in spite of him.
Might have a stronger legacy than Richard Garriott and Peter Molyneux so far too!
Tell me lies tell me sweet little lies
Such a shame the Radiant AI stuff never got fully developed in Oblivion or Skyrim.
It was the biggest step forward since like Ultima VII. And it worked great in Oblivion like with the Ahdarji’s Heirloom quest where you have to steal the ring off the noblewoman and can do it either waiting until night and sneaking into the castle, or during the day by pickpocketing her in the market, etc.
Imagine a quest like that but with no loading screens or separation between areas, so you could levitate into the castle, or climb up the walls, or shoot a rope up, or use an invisibility potion for easy pickpocketing, or use a powerful Charm spell to make her hand it to you, etc.
And that’s just one quest, with no dungeon-diving or combat!
this gave me a mess in my pants. It’s all I’ve ever wanted since Daggerfall
As I posted in my other comment here - imagine that with fully dynamic AI and settlements like Dwarf Fortress Adventurer Mode, and spells that interact with the environment and physics like Magicka and like the concept for Underworld Ascendant.
I think that’s the sort of thing they want to head towards with the dynamic quests and stuff.
Unfortunately the near-requirement to voice dialogue (and even generating the dialogue!) nowadays makes it harder to scale even with the systems in place. Hopefully the improvements in AI generation can help here.
The promise of Radiant AI is still there. I know it has the potential to be something special. I just think it’s really difficult to actually capture the realistic behavior people are looking for without building every NPC’s routines down to a granular level, which is an incredible amount of work to build/test.
Advancements in AI could really help push that in new directions, with context-aware routines capable of building themselves through improvisation, but I’m not even sure we’ll get to that point by TES6.
The first time exiting the sewers in Oblivion, looking up at the sky, water and landscape on the Xbox360 was just magical. Todd’s had a great run and his creations from TES and Fallout are once of my favorite games franchises.
God, that feeling when you first step out of the sewers is a core memory for me. Oblivion was my first TES game, I played that shit until my PS3 save inevitably got corrupted
Was Morrowind for me. Climbing out of that prison galley to find myself in that foggy alien swamp with the rumbling groans and sorrowful cries of the nearby silt strider. Realizing shortly after that if I could see it lying around, it had value, and I could pick it up and keep it or even sell it if I wanted to. The world felt so mysterious and hostile. I had no idea what strange sights lurked out in the mist. That brown, dusty, ancient world always felt like I was cracking open a tome rich with lost customs and mystery.
I love Elder Scrolls as well, but I kind of wish people would just give him this for now and stop badgering him about the next game. We know we’re getting it, we know it won’t be for a while, and yes, that sucks, but let the dude enjoy his passion project.
This has been a decades-long project for him, creatively and conceptually. Something he wanted before he even got a job at Bethesda. Like, there’s a significant amount of history with him wanting to make a space RPG, but only when “the tech is advanced enough”.
Whether it lives up to expectations is another story. No game ever lives up to every expectation, but even if this lives up to a few, I think he’ll consider it a success.
My only concern about post-TES: VI is who takes over for the series. I kind of trust Howard to put someone he believes in to take over, but it’s not going to be the same regardless. Maybe someone who works on ESO would be good, but I don’t know.
But in the meantime, I’m just going to (hopefully) enjoy his passion project and I can wait a few more years for the next Elder Scrolls. I know it’s become kind of a meme that it’ll be another decade or two, but I honestly don’t think it’ll be that long.
Hopefully it’s someone who’s actually in touch with the culture. For all his faults, you can’t say Todd didn’t grow up knowing what makes a game fun. He’s not some business guy coming in just because the gaming industry is booming.
Considering it might not go out for at least 7-8 years, if not 10, I’m not suprised.
Yeah he’ll be nearly 60 maybe over if it gets delayed at all. That’s a career.
Even when I think about ES6, I’ve no idea how they are going to approach the game. Is it going the same of Skyrim with minor changes and higher graphical fidelity? Or change the approach. So many games have launched between Skyrim and ES6 that I can’t imagine the pressure they have in order to bring the next novel elder scrolls game
I’m assuming they’re going to learn a lot from Starfield and that ES6 will be pretty different from Skyrim. Going back and playing Skyrim now, it already feels like it’s dated, so they’ve got to change some stuff.
The best TES moment for me was the Ahdarji’s Heirloom quest where you have to steal the ring off the noblewoman and can do it either waiting until night and sneaking into the castle, or during the day by pickpocketing her in the market, etc.
The added stealth and physics system was such a huge win over Morrowind.
Now in TES6, Imagine a quest like that but with no loading screens or separation between areas, so you could levitate into the castle, or climb up the walls, or shoot a rope up, or use an invisibility potion for easy pickpocketing, or use a powerful Charm spell to make her hand it to you, etc.
And that’s just one quest, with no dungeon-diving or combat!
Imagine drop-in co-op play for dungeon-diving, so you could play with a DnD style party of spellcasters, rogues and warriors. Exploring massive dungeons with traps, physics like Underworld Ascendant had wanted (i.e. burning rope-bridges, freezing water to walk on it, etc.), spells with environmental effects, etc.
Imagine NPCs with dynamic needs, planning and scheduling, and settlements with their own needs and market - relying on traders to exchange goods, and caravans that you could escort or rob. Dynamic enemies like Dwarf Fortress Adventure Mode - bandits and necromancers that take over towns, or infest abandoned settlements and dungeons.
That is what TES6 should be.
Oh wow. I totally forgot about that one. My favorite part of Skyrim has always been the immersion. I just always forget when I enter the world of what I need to do. The flexibility to actually w/e the hell you want to is just insane.
Absolutely. That would be crazy if they achieve that. Too many expectations are riding on the game especially given the fact that the last iteration of the game came out 10+ years ago
I think he said could be his last “Elder Scrolls game” not last game?
Skyrim came out when I was a freshman in high school. By the time ES6 comes out I will be nearly 40, or in my 40s. Wtf are they waiting on for this game to take so long?
Open world games like Skyrim are hard to make, and modern expectations are making them even harder.
People are shitting on Bethesda for taking so long, but no other developer has managed to make a worthy competitor in the decade+ since Skyrim released.
Kingdom Come Deliverance is good, but I agree overall.
Kingdom Come is a solid game, but it’s also still a very narrow game compared to Skyrim. You play as a specific character and the “sandbox” nature of the game is much more limited.
It’s more like the Witcher where you can roleplay slight variations on one person, rather than Skyrim where you can role-play as a vast array of potential characters.
Yeah, the sad fact is that no one has even come close to creating a Skyrim-like. The Witcher 3 had imitators like the recent Assassins Creed games etc. but there is still nothing quite like The Elder Scrolls.
Cyberpunk is the most recent game I can think of that tried, and, well…
Yeah I got it the day it released near the end of my 2nd year of High School and I’ll probably be in my early/mid 30s by the time it finally comes out!
Ugh, Morrowind came out when I was in high school.
40 is approaching fast enough, I don’t want to be nearly 50 when ES6 comes out.
Oblivion came out when I was a freshman in high school. And I remember feeling like the wait between Oblivion (2006) and Skyrim (2011) was impossibly long.
We’ve now had that wait more than twice over, and I’m sure it’ll be more than thrice over by the time we even get a title for TES6. Crazy how long AAA games take to develop these days.
This kid I know worked for a landscaping company that worked on Todd Howards yard and he would always piss in Todd’s bushes. He also said his wife was actually a nice person. Still pissed in his bushes tho.
…like to be mean? Or just because he had to go?
To experience the freedom of the Open World RPG that is life
To be “edgy”. They are more someone I know than a friend, however.
He said it might be his last Elder Scrolls game, because he is getting older and it takes them no less than 900 years to release a new one.
“Now, kids, this might be grandma’s last Christmas”
I mean, yeah, by the time it’s out he’ll be nearing his 70s
His ascension to godhood has begun. Perfectly balanced, of course.
Suddenly have a craving for some Yorkshire Tea
Cool, they must have found a bigger liar to replace him at Bethesda. It took them some time searching but they finally did it.
Oh get over yourself neckbeard.
You can disagree with someone’s point without insulting them. Please remember the be nice rule if you wish to continue participating on Beehaw.
it just works
Finally, I can’t wait for a new fresh face to over promise me games.
Perhaps Peter Molyneux can pick up the torch
I said fresh, not Todd Howard’s prototype
