The Elder Scrolls 6: “It’s almost impossible,” this former Bethesda veteran thinks the game won’t live up to expectations

Game news The Elder Scrolls 6: “It’s almost impossible,” this former Bethesda veteran thinks the game won’t live up to expectations

The Shadow of Skyrim Still Hoveres

November 11, 2011. For many players, this date brings back memories of cold autumn evenings spent roaming the lands of Skyrim in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Whether through the original version or through countless mods, Skyrim has generated a lot of interest. Carried in all directions to the point that this fact has become a common joke, Skyrim continues to attract players and content creators. In 2018, and while we knew nothing about Starfield, Bethesda released a short teaser for The Elder Scrolls VI. A simple aerial camera pans over a mountainous coastal area, after which the name of the franchise appears. Since then? Well, nothing.

Six years later, we are still at the same point. Development has since started, but we haven’t seen any images or videos of the gameand Bethesda is still focused on Starfield and more specifically on its expansion. The anticipation around The Elder Scrolls VI is immense, but the industry and players have changed a lot in that time. Next-gen consoles have come out, the industry is changing profoundly even if it means leaving more than 30,000 workers by the wayside, and expectations have evolved. We saw with Starfield that The “broken” side of Bethesda Game Studios games is becoming less and less acceptedThe public expects the studio to produce well-finished titles with more modern mechanics.

The case of Cyberpunk 2077, launched under more than questionable conditions on console, was a landmark. In a recent interview with Kiwi Talkz, Former author and game designer Bruce Nesmith brings up this topic of expectations and is quite pessimistic. First of all, let’s remember that if he worked on Fallout 3 and 4 as well as on Oblivion and Skyrim, he left the studio a few years ago in order to embark on a career as a novelist. That being said, he keeps an eye on the video game industry, and obviously has some form of expertise on the subject. For him, it will be It’s almost impossible for The Elder Scrolls VI to fully live up to expectations.

The expectations of fans who want to buy The Elder Scrolls 6 are going to be almost impossible to meet. And the marketing departments are holding their heads in their hands and crying. Because it’s like, “Okay, if it’s not perfect, if it doesn’t get a 95+ on Metacritic, it’s a failure.” Elder Scrolls 6 is undoubtedly going to be an incredible game, but it’s going to be compared to all of Bethesda’s previous games.

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Being noticed and marking players: an endless quest

With this statement, Bruce Nesmith brings up several issues revolving around the perception of games. No game is capable of meeting all the expectations placed on it, nor of realizing all the fantasies. This is the other side of the coin of the fact to be the new title in a cult franchise and to have been announced very, very early. As for the mention of Metacritic, it is not insignificant.

The rating and review aggregator, despite all its limitations, remains a strong indicator for players and with many studios and publishers. In a highly competitive environment, all major productions aim for an overall score in order to stand out from the crowd. The downside is of course that a “big” game that does not reach a certain score can be considered a “failure” without being one. To give another example of the weight that The Elder Scrolls VI already carries, he said:

Imagine for a moment that you work at Larian Studios. They just released Baldur’s Gate III, and now they have to make another game (two are in development, ed.). What will the expectations be for the next project from this studio? Larian was not a studio that was at the forefront of everyone’s mind, present on the lips of the vast majority of video game buyers… They were not what everyone considered a top-tier publisher. Well, guess what? They are now. They are on the map now, and that means that expectations are very high for them.