What I Want From The Elder Scrolls 6 Following Starfield's Reception 

One quality of Skyrim that helped propel it onto multiple generations of hardware is that the game is really cozy. The setting is a large part of that: cold, Nordic landscapes punctuated with quaint towns and not terribly difficult underground dungeons. There's just something about wandering around the snowy, overcast landscape and then ducking into a cabin or lodge and seeing the warm glow of a fireplace and hearing a bard playing, or slipping underground into a spooky dungeon and solving some puzzle and killing a few monsters - it all sets a great mood and atmosphere.

I'd like longer well written quest chains. The guilds in skyrim felt like 5 or so quests then you were in charge.

Agree completely Bethesda games were about getting lost in a lived in world and wondering whats over the next hill and discovering more about the world by going there. Knowing that everywhere isn’t important to the world and is randomly generated made starfield feel smaller than Morrowind when it certainly wasn’t.

What I would like - as a 56 year old lifelong gamer... Is for it to come out before I die.

There are some people who are excitedly predicting that ES6 would cover all of Tamriel, including ships sailing the ocean. "Because Starfield proved it's possible!" This is another thing that I truly hope does not happen. Bigger is not guaranteed to be better. Quality over quantity.

I especially loved how satisfying (and consequential) it was in Morrowind to tinker with your race, specialization, favored attributes, major/minor skills, and sign during character creation.

Morrowind was my first ES game and one of my first RPG's. I was blown away by the first person camera and immersion. The one thing I always said about that game was the the world was massive and you could wander in any direction and find something interesting.

When adding depth back to their RPG systems and interaction back to their worlds, I want them to look back at fondly remembered classics that aren't just their own. A big problem with Bethesda games is that they're treated almost as their own genre bubble and compared against themselves. Why not look back at Wizardry 8? Incredible mix of world and mechanics there that they can learn from, and not too far a stone's throw from Morrowind.

Really fair and constructive. Oblivion's AI mess had so many memorable moments that got people talking, even if it sometimes broke the game.

Elder Scrolls 6 is the one game i desperately want to be good. Skyrim is my favourite game of all time and there hasnt been a bad entry into the main series yet.

It's not just the exploration in Starfield which I found pointless, the building serves no real purpose either. In Fallout 4 the outposts do make sense, they are tied to the story and once you get your trade networks going they add to the population of the world, like, you see your traders wandering about, your outposts grow in population and so forth, it gives the illusion that the Commonwealth is moving forward. Plus the Minutemen missions for the settlements are rewarding, you can find decent loot, in Starfield my loadout hardly changed after completing the story because I wasn't finding anything substantially better than the gear I finished the main plot arc with.

I think a large part of the NPC issue is the pressure they faced with city populations. A common complaint about bethesda games is that their cities are way to small and feature a way to low population. They tried to resolve this with the procedural NPCs (which as a result cant feature a radiant ai), but as a consequence, the main npcs became static.

I very much appreciate both your attitude and approach. Thanks.

I wish Bethesda had looked at other open world games to get ideas from on how to evolve their formula. Kingdom Come Deliverance is kind of what I was hoping what modern day Bethesda games would be like, just with more fantasy elements and additional mechanics.

I think if they drop the proc gen stuff and focus on a good world and combat, it will bring a lot of people back. If they go further with roleplay and story it could bring it to that next level of acclaim.

A well-reasoned piece. I like how you see some good progress in Starfield to Bethesda’s approach but also comment on the things that didn’t work. I hope they can keep on the track and not just let the criticism dictate their future approach. One thing I liked about Starfield was how levels in different perk areas required a task or feat to be achieved in order to unlock their progress. Masterful idea.

The thing is, they have a blueprint. They can simply take the things that fans love most from the past 3 Elder Scrolls games, update the graphics and combat and they will make most people happy and release a good game. Which is basically what you said in this video. Hopefully they will actually do the right thing this time.

My favourite part of skyrim was for the 1st time i played a game where i can interact with simple items like forks and plates,it was just so cool it made it feel real,

Couldn't agree more, Mort. Especially in a post Baldur's Gate 3 world I hope companies see that there's a huge market for deep and expensive RPGs. Besides that customers should expect game devs to build upon and improve all their best systems. I've seen a lot of people say that it's unfair to compare a new IP to older beth games, which is wild to me.

I like Bethesda, I just wish they focused on their core audience of old school RPGs. I loathe the wider audience crap

Bethesda needs to STOP believing bigger is better.

You review is fair. I didn't like starfield, not because it's a bad game, it's just not a cheap game and I'm poor, from a poor country, it costs me a lot to buy a game and when I buy a game and it's "meh", it's bad for me, every game is an investment which is why pirating is still a thing in the world.

All i want is the same as all the other TES i´ve played. Start the game, escape the prison, go outside, turn the oposite direction where the main quest tells me to go and lose myself for 80 hrs until i decide that maybe its time to start the main quest. If that happens then im good. Oh...and drop the procedural generation all together!

It's such a treat when you watch a video that matches your own perspective completely. I honestly think radiant ai is necessary for Elder Scrolls games as it really rounds out the gameplay for the thieves guild & dark brotherhood factions. Without radiant ai, working for those guilds would just feel lackluster. Although I'm happy that Bethesda seems interested in bringing back some rpg systems, I really wish they would bring back stat allocation. I don't understand why so many rpgs devs think people can't handle that aspect of character building.

I've seen a few video that says Skyrim was what ruined Bethesda, and I kinda agree with it. Skyrim represents streamlining as it was a significantly streamlined version of Oblivion in most aspects. Bethesda might have thought that was why Skyrim was so successful and started streamlining more and more on their newer titles. Oblivion is still a very unique experience with ambitious systems, but I can't say that about Skyrim/ Fallout4/ Starfield.

Haha always love hearing you ramble, Mortym! 🤗 Thx again for all the content and have an amaaaazing day!

It’s easy to say “like Morrowind/Daggerfall” but that’s obviously not going to happen. But I do think they can make a modern, broadly appealing game that’s more satisfying for their older fans. Something along these lines: - Character building and mechanical depth on par with Oblivion. In particular, bringing back attributes (they can ditch the old level-up system and do something simpler, e.g. the way Fallout does skill points) and having far more spells, not just 1/effect/tier (Oblivion spell creation would be good and should be easy to implement but it’s not essential if there’s enough variety already) - Keep level scaling but do it like Skyrim/Fallout 3 where overworld creatures don’t scale and scaled groups of enemies still contain lower tier enemies so you feel more powerful. - Set it in the 4th era after Skyrim (it’s the game most people have played) and focus on a region with a distinct culture and conflicts (I think Valenwood or Hammerfell would be really good). I think the Empire and Dominion both trying to build their strength and influence for another continent-wide war is an interesting backdrop. Keep Skyrim’s tone; keep the world-saving main quest but ground it more in the local culture (like Morrowind, not just “stop some Daedric prince from destroying the world”). I’d like to see more nuance in the writing of local, Imperial and Aldmeri interests, which should provide at least 1 interesting faction choice (like Morrowind’s Great Houses) to add to the Fighters, Mages, Thieves Guilds. Oh and add an Arena… seriously why not? It’s simple and players love it. - Most importantly, *ditch procedural content* (or at most use it for the Fighters Guild and inkeeper bounties only) and focus on the quantity of interesting, handcrafted content, even if it’s not super polished. Obviously being polished is better but it won’t matter if they don’t recapture what people loved about the series. I understand why people complain but I really think we’re giving Bethesda the wrong feedback by complaining so much about bugs. Is a bug-free Fallout 4 or Starfield really what people want? I don’t think so. But it’s what we’re gonna get if Bethesda listens to the community’s feedback…

There are really only 2 major changes I would like. 1. Have spell mixing/making return. 2. Change "Archers." Weaken them slightly, because archer builds are so easy and easy to default to in ES5 and make the arrows affect different areas. Slow them if you get a leg, drop the sword with the hand, crit above the neck, etc. They can even dust off the V.A.T.S. and use it in the background for recognition.

Hey Mort, been following since you were only doing DOS2. Love your content. I’m so glad you’ve grown so much. Keep up the great work homie.

Awww! Hope you have an amazing time with your son on his birthday, Mortym!! 🤗❤

Great video topic Mr. Mort. And awesome commentary as always

I really liked Starfields art design and the character leveling felt a lot better than in other previous titles, they really nailed it. Some of the same issues from their previous games still persist somewhat with the Health spongy enemies at high levels and some of the perks are Save or Suck but it has been an improvement. However the story felt way too... safe? I do not want to say uninspired because there were some really great moments but for the life of me I cannot remember one notable quest that left me with a "wow" factor that I had to discuss with friends and get their impressions on it. I know they do not want to take a lot of risks when it comes to game development but it felt like they took too safe of an approach. I explored a few planets and had some fun with some of the prefab building but after a while it devolved into me doing the exact same routine pattern. I ended up being more in the cities than out exploring because after a certain point it was just a rush to get through the grind and try and find my way into the universe on the last meaningful run. It may be because I have been playing more of Baldur's Gate 3, Pillars of Eternity and Tyranny and have been spoiled by the great writing and world building but I really want better stories that make put the controller down and make me ponder what I just experienced.

Skyrim was my first TES game and I remember the first time I booted up my PS3 and I heard the theme on the title screen I was immediately hooked and just the feeling of wondering around this new world not really bothering with the quests kept me busy for my first few hours, THATS what I love about the game the most because no matter how many times I’ve played it since there are few games out there that just beat the environment and tone/vibe of Skyrim. Likewise I felt the same way about oblivion but mostly for the fact it’s pretty easy to role play and get lost in that game as well, wanting through the forest hunting game then finding a inn and sitting down for a drink and some food before renting a room for the night and venturing out agin the next day keeps it feeling fresh to me. If they can integrate all that into TES6 and take it as time to return to form they could really recapture the lightening in a bottle again

Well made. I love your energy.

I am glad that you re-evaluated your views on Starfield since your 100% review. Your Oblivion re-visit is an awesome surprise and is well needed given how Starfield dissapointed most Bethesda fans. TES games are miles above in both immersion and meningful player freedom; seems Bethesda is put to shame by it's own past successes. As with many AAA brands, we are left wondering if they are truly the same studio or just a corporate Ship of Thesseus that holds IPs. Being an old TES fan, I saw Bethesda lose some of its dev-magic the moment they went all-in with vacuous survival and sandbox mechanics with Fallout 4 (probably under the spell of 2010's Survival games hype) -- while not managing to ramp up stronger RPG and world mechanics. Quite the contrary: continous streamlining and drop in writing quality crept in, and are especially visible in last year's Starfield.

We love hear you ramble :3

A really fun story for each guild and an interesting world that's all I need, those should be bulletpoints on a white board, can even focus side quests that interact with that and bam you have yourself an amazing game sir, maybe hire a comedian to help design some quests, give players a good laugh occationally

What I want from TES VI: - Deep lore akin to Morrowind or Oblivion Knights of the Nine - Handcrafted map. If it has to have procedural, islands past the edge of the map or shifting sands under the desert could be okay. - Damage types, armor types, bring back the 8 core attributes and adopt the Fallout 76 1-15 attribute range instead of the 1-100 system. - Crafting skills are not tied to XP and don't share a perk resource with combat skills. - Carry over and expand on NG+ from Starfield. Tied to this, turn off essential NPC flags and provide writing to allow players to live out the end of the doomed world they create before trying again in NG+.

Love this style of video! Would love to hear your thoughts on different types of rigs compared against each other (strengths and weaknesses of WRPGS, JRPGS, CRPGS, etc). Cheers!

For the algorithm!

Excellent and fair video. I agree 100%, including the fear that Bethesda listens to the wrong feedback. Sadly, videos like yours are rare on RU-vid when it comes to Starfield.

The funny thing is that currently, this is the best moment to bring back radiant AI since theres actually decent dialog and behavior AI out there. Bethesda can truly make something revolutionary if they want to risk it. And that's just the problem, risk. The Bethesda that risked everything with daggerfall and Morrowind isn't the current day starfield and fallout 4 Bethesda.

I know this was 3 months ago, but I recently discovered your channel and have loved it. I thought I'd share my opinion on the whole Starfield thing. Something I have noticed is that people have complained about Bethesda games since Skyrim for not being complex as something like Daggerfall or Morrowind, the fan favorite best Bethesda games. People complain about Skyrim being too simple and casual, and that the simple design extends to stories and quests so instead of having quests that are complex and require thinking, you have these quests that are so simple, you have to spend little to no thoughts thinking about outcomes or what to do. This design choice of Making things simple for a more general and casual audience is making people mad because they want what Morrowind and Daggerfall did, where you didn't know what to do and the game said "figure it out" and dropped you in a location with no other info. They want quests, even small ones, that make you think and have a small layer of complexity to them beyond *good choice*, *bad choice*, and maybe *neutral choice*. It's honestly very reasonable wanting Bethesda to go back to what they did, making worlds where yo need to try, but Bethesda sits here and tries to make a game that has the design of their favored games, but simplified and made in a way that is more accessible and easy to jump into for a casual audience, which most people would not want because it removes the complexity of the games systems. Honestly, I'm more or less on the fence, while I like the simple design because it does make it easy to jump in and have fun for a bit, it also acts as a downside because the simple jump in and do it design has obviously kept them from making quests with the complexity of Morrowind-like quality. I think another thing that also acts as a detriment is that Starfield is obviously designed with Daggerfall in mind. Daggerfall was never meant to be a game where the open world mattered, it was meant to be an RPG where the dungeon diving mattered. The reason why they added an openworld was because it helped flesh out the game and make it feel real. The best way to describe Daggerfall is a dungeon diving RPG, with simulator elements for extra role-playing depth, and it's obvious that Starfield more or less does the same, but much more simplified and less complex, which of course goes to the issue of people not liking Bethesda because they are simplifying their games for a more general audience. You can also liken the open world travel experience to Daggerfall, where you need to fast travel to actually get anywhere, and the openworld aspect is basically useless outside of encountering enemies or NPCs, and very very very rarely, an actual quest, but it's useless because the main focus is on towns and dungeons, not the open world. You could also liken the travel mechanic of Starfield to Elder Scrolls 1 Arena. Arena had a travel system where you needed to open a map of the continent, then click on a country which brought up a country map, then click on a town to fast travel to. Once you are in this town, you have one town (or outpost if we use Starfield terms) where you can get a quest or 2, and the rest of the area is just dungeons and empty openworld, aside from maybe an animal or 2. Along with this were of course, loading screens to get to these areas, loading screens for dungeons, and loading screens for buildings. So honestly, Starfield is really just Bethesda doing the simplify for a casual audience thing most BGS fans hate, but using the design of Daggerfall/Arena. Both games already being scrutinized by most casual audience people because they are dated, or they are a specific niche that doesn't appeal to them.

Once I got Skyrim VR (virtual reality) working with community mods I stopped playing Starfield. Skyrim VR is just on another level that is so wonderful it's almost not fair to compare it to other Bethesda games. I HIGHLY HIGHLY recommend this to anyone who loves the Elder Scrolls universe. I'm not sure that Starfield will even compare once they do figure out VR support. Skyrim is so much more immersive and real. I sincerely hope that the new ES will have both the creation community Skyrim has, which is invaluable as the game ages it keeps improving beyond publisher support, as well as VR support. Given how amazing Skyrim VR is (and the age of this game) I can't imagine how good the new ES6 VR will be. Side note I have an Oculus Quest 3 running on PC-VR with the Skyrim mods (FUS) installed > can't recommend this enough.

I respect the hope you have. Definitely will watch your review before touching this

Good show sir

Always love to hear your balanced, constructive thoughts. Ramble on!! Thanks Morty son !!! ❤💀

yeah i enjoyed SKyrim more than newest Ubisoft games in recent years

The Radiant NPCs are my favourite thing about the TES series, and it's upsetting that Bethesda has progressively toned it down over each release since Oblivion, when it adds so much life and dynamism to their games. I want to see the massively dynamic NPCs that Oblivion's trailers suggested the game's NPCs would have, not the increasingly static and boring NPCs Bethesda seems to increasingly gravitate towards with every subsequent release. This is technically feasible, games like X4:Foundations have very dynamic and well simulated NPCs, and it looked like it was in the cards for Oblivion back in the day too.

I really wanted to love Star Field but it didn't have the replay hook of their other games for me. I realized that was because every character was actually the same for a huge amount of the inital game. In skyrim i decide Heavy Armor and Two handed or Sneaky archer and by the inital escapes exit i have characters that work and feel different. In Star Field at 20 hours all characters are just now able to carry stuff fly a ship and open basic locks. Its take a lot longer to level and you invest a huge portion of those levels into generic stuff.

Great video dude. I love that you can stay true to your opinion in the mist of all the hate and still talk about this stuff in a calm an reasoned manner, without overdramatizing like most other youtubers seem to do. Respect you for that. I personally think the hate for starfield is hugely overblown even though I agree with alot of the criticism the game has gotten. It's a pretty good game, that just could have been so much better, which makes it a dissapointing game. I still have hope for the TES 6 because even tho starfield was a pretty big misstep in some ways I still think there's signs in starfield that point towards that BGS listened to the main criticism Fallout 4 got. So I think there is a pretty good chance of them listening to the criticism starfield now has gotten. What also gives me hope is that fact that the main problems with starfield such as the world, exploration and how you travel within the world, these are aspects that traditionally have been big strengths of BGS, so I don't think it's a stretch to see them adress these problems in TES 6 at all. We will see how it turns out though when it comes out in like 5 years. keep up the good content!

The problem with Starfield is the things NPCs asks you to do would only make sense in a medieval setting. Those "talk to [person]" quests where you travel to another planet, talk to [person], then travel back to the 1st planet, would only make sense in a future where phones somehow don't exist. Also, less load screens would be good.

So I've seen mods for two different solutions for the Morowind/Oblivion leveling problem, the first is just to set all your level up modifiers (other than luck) to 5 or some other static number. The second is to have you gain stats as you level up skills(I think it was 1 stat per 4 points in relevant skills) independently of leveling up. The first is actually reminiscent of Dagerfall's system where you got a certain number of stat points per level up, though the second is I think more inline with the whole idea of your characters growth being determined by play style. The first of the three big things I would like to see are a continuation of the story line with the Thalmore trying to destroy the world to escape Lorcan's trap and become god's which is incredibly Gnostic. I'd also like to see a return of mutually exclusive factions, more in the way we saw in Morowind than in Oblivion (the necromancers and Blackwood company weren't really actual factions). In a more mechanical sense I'd like to see a return of spellcrafting. Also if a quest is going to offer a unique item/spell it should not be level scaled. As cool an idea as that was in Oblivion it just meant that I always wanted to hold off on all of those quests until so late that it didn't matter, and it became the same sort of anxiety source as the making sure I was getting two +5 modifiers and that one of those was endurance because unlike mana HP was determined by what your endurance was at level up not what it is now.

What i want is Rpg style mechanics and lore like Morrowind, Sidequests from Oblivion and I guess modern graphics from Skyrim ?

A return of spears, medium armor, teleportation spells and levitation would be a good start. Going back to Morrowind roots and all.

I think we might potentially see a repeat of history. Starfield is this generation's daggerfall - a game too large for its own good, filled with half-baked ideas plastered over with repetitive, procedurally generated content. And they got a similar reception for that as Starfield has received. In direct response, Bethesda scaled back their next major project, took the criticism to heart, and came out with the masterpiece that is Morrowind. Can they do that again? I think they'll try, but if they actually succeed is another matter.

Traveling in Morrowind was a chore, but it helped with the immersion. With the las two releases having fast travel, it's hard to imagine it going away. I think more FO4 shallowness is to come. Thanks for the video. Onward to 300k. All glory to the algorithm.

While I didn’t love starfield I still liked it enough but I hope for ES6 they go back to their roots on some ideas

Another great breakdown

It'll never happen again after the last time was so embarrassing for Bethesda, but I'd love for them to just hand Elder Scrolls off to another studio like they did with New Vegas. But... history tells us that they will make a progressively shallower, pared down evolution of their formula, and the hype train will delude 'everyone' into thinking this time will be different. Personally, in the 60+ hours I put into Starfield, that I didn't see anything remotely approaching choices that mattered/had any impact or interesting faction interactions.

Good point about the radiant AI in Starfield and NPCs not moving around, I hadn't considered that. Another thing I realised about starfield is they have injected a lot of extra "unimportant" NPCs who just wander about. Although BGS games have always had these the number of them in Starfield seems to break the immersion because they are so lifeless. They have little to say and wander about so randomly that it draws attention to the synthetic feel of the simulation. Keep up the good work!

Your opinions are valuable, Mortym.

Great video by the way.

I hope Avowed does similar things.

I'm come back to this video in 2030 when they finally get around to releasing this game.

I'm dying for your Oblivion review but also I can tell you had the idea to make this while preparing for that haha

I hope they make the combat system more engaging: button combos from different attacks that feel meaningful, dodging + combat rolls that are available from the start, & perhaps improve the fun aspects of crafting, & ensuring the storylines are compelling I'm currently Level 18 with an awesome starship & Level 2 Ship Builder skill, hoping to get some good star battles soon. Perhaps adding AI-controlled friendly squadrons, and tackling battlecruisers and war fleets together will be in my upcoming gameplay

One thing I want that isn't exactly top of the list but would be nice, is a character selection menu. Since you choose races in TES unlike Fallout, having multiple saves needs to be easier to maintain.

I think you brought up a lot of good points regarding the exploration aspect of where Starfield was bad. I loved that feeling of not knowing what I would encounter when I started off on a quest or journey in any direction in Fallout 3 or 4 as well as Skyrim and Oblivion. But I do want to say that for Starfield I was willing to give up on the exploration and just power through the story at least to see how the quest turned out, but could not even manage that because of the insane amount of loading screens, so I certainly hope they take note that this was a crap design choice and not repeat it in any future games.

Another great video

I want to see more interaction between companions and other NPC's like they did in Fallout 4. I really loved how Nick Valentine was commenting on things that were happening in the story and how he reacted to the comments of other essential characters. They should do this in tes 6 but with even more consequences. That would make the game much more connected whereas in older bethesda games, the companions didnt really care that the story was progressing or who the player was interacting with.

The fact that we are getting GTA 6 before we get Skyrim to me is crazy!

Excellent insight! I agree on everything you laid out in this video. I have hope Bethesda can pull it off!

If it were up to me, you could ramble every day.🤗🤗👍👍

I remember watching these exact videos 10 years ago, thinking TES was on a shorter cycle than it actually is. It's kind of fun and cute how we are still making the exact same videos ten years on.

what makes the leveling system for something like morrowind great is that it is unique. Most CRPGs use a class based, perk based leveling system. Morrowind's leveling system might be more flawed from a balance perspective, but it is different from a traditional system.

You hit the nail on the head. Bethesda has been stripping back content for a while now, trying to make things less buggy and also more universally appealing, but it's just been depriving their newer games of depth that the old games had. I'd rather live with a few bugs for compelling gameplay than to have the opposite.

Getting a bad main line elder scrolls game would be a big L, so I really hope they buckle down and do it justice. I'm a bit worried after 76 and Starfield, but I'm hopeful that they will take it seriously and learn from the mistakes.

Can't wait to see how many hours the Oblivion retrospective it. It's been to long since I've added one to the playlist.

never been this early 🙏🏾 love your channel man

There is an incredible indie RPG called Kenshi that really nailed lived in world stuff you talked about in this video. I personally love the hell out of it despite its flaws.

I'm so looking forward to the next Elder Scrolls. It's embarrassing how much time and money I've spent on Skyrim. 😂 Thanks for the video!

Actually, some minor characters DO have schedules in Starfield. You can see this on Cydonia with the miners and the Key with the pirates you recruit, but not with the shopkeepers you find or most other characters. So the framework's there, but Bethesda decided to just leave it off, and in a lot of cases never even made beds for most people. Good news is, modders might be able to fix this eventually, but probably not until the construction set's out.

Thank you for this review. I'm trying to straighten out in my head why I liked it and hated it at the same time. Radiant AI would've helped too.

As long as ESVI keeps to one planet and continent with radiant quests and something to find every 2 minutes, it should in theory automatically be better in regards to exploration than Starfield.

I think it's clear that they need to leave the engine behind. They can have the biggest goals and may be capable of pulling it off but that engine is doing them no favors. I get it Bethesda is what they are because of modders but at a certain point you need to build a brand new engine from the ground up or start using a pre made one

There's so much potential with radiant ai and procedural generation IF its used correctly. For example, imagine a planet generates a mining operation and fills it with pirates. The player clears it out, and the mine is now producing output. The output gets shipped back along a trade route, which the pirates then attack. The player then feels like their actions had an impact, and that the world is responding to their choices with logical followups. Bethesda's obsession with radiant quests could also work if they implemented it well. Instead of their current system of a generic bounty to clear generic bandits from a generic cave, imagine these examples. The player is advancing in the College of Winterhold. They get given a quest to go to a Dwemer ruin and aid in its excavation and study. The game chooses an unexplored Dwemer dungeon and places a few friendly professors and students in the entryway for the player to interact with. The game then chooses from a pool of enemies, in this case Dwemer automatons. The player is tasked by one of the professors to clear them out, and to further explore the dungeon. The game then flags the players available pool of spells, their armor, their weapons, and if they have any companions or if they frequently use conjuration for back up. In this case the player is a Mage who almost exclusively uses spells in fights, has a heavy armored Lydia backing them up, and who always summons a flame atronach. The game then spawns in a large mob spider automatons, backed up by several melee and crossbow spheres. That way when the player enters combat, Lydia and the atronach protect the player from the melee mobs, giving the player the chance to aid from the backline, but not be immune from danger due to the crossbow spheres trying to focus on them. The player works their way through the dungeon. As the quest is an excavation one generated by the College, several logical to find books and enchanted items are placed as random loot. As the dungeon is Dwemer, several high quality smithed items, such as jewelry, armor pieces, or weapons are rolled as loot. The player then hits the boss room. The game sets the centurion's health and damage based on the prior player evaluation, and additionally gives it some melee sphere's as backup due to the player's companions. The reward in the boss chest is then rolled from a pool that selects for items flagged for Dwemer dungeons, and the fact the quest was given by the College, perhaps a permanent Dwemer sphere companion based on the player's conjuration and companion focused play-style. NOW The player is advancing in the Companions. They get given a quest to go to a Dwemer ruin, as the College of Winterhold has requested assistance bandits hindering an excavation. The game chooses an unexplored Dwemer dungeon, and places a few friendly professors and students in the entryway for the player to interact with. The game then chooses from a pool of enemies, in this case Bandits. The player is tasked by one of the professors to clear out the Bandits, who have set up shop in the depths of the readily available fortress, and who have now kidnapped one of the professors. The game then flags the players available pool of spells, their armor, their weapons, and if they have any companions or if they frequently use conjuration for back up. In this case the player is a heavily armored melee warrior, who always brings Aela along on fights for a ranged support, and who turns into a werewolf if the fight is going badly. The game then spawns a mixed group of ranged bandits who Aela will trade shots with, while the player has to contend with several melee bandits now clad in pieces of Dwemer armor, and using Dwemer weapons. The player works their way through the dungeon. As the quest is a clear bandit quest generated by the Companions, high value items such as jewelry or gold is placed as loot. As the dungeon is Dwemer filled with Bandits, a random assortment of high quality smithed Dwemer items and rare but more poorly maintained random other armor and weapons are placed as loot. The player then hits the boss room. The game chooses a bandit chieftain, setting his health and items based on the prior player evaluation, and additionally gives him a mage as backup. The reward in the boss chest is then rolled from a pool that selects for items flagged for Dwemer dungeons, and the fact the quest was given by the Companions, perhaps a high quality enchanted Dwemer armor piece or weapon of a type the player uses. And Again The player is advancing in the Thieves guild. They get given a quest to go to a Dwemer ruin, as the College of Winterhold is excavating it of valuable artifacts. The game chooses an unexplored Dwemer dungeon, and places a few professors and students in the entryway for the player to interact with. The game then chooses from a pool of enemies, in this case, College students and professors guarded by mercenaries. The player is tasked by their informant, one of the students, that several rare artifacts have been found, with the rarest being guarded by a small army of automatons, whom the professors and mercenaries are working to get past. The game then flags the players available pool of spells, their armor, their weapons, and if they have any companions or if they frequently use conjuration for back up. In this case the player is a lone stealth archer, who uses illusion magic and charm spells to back up their sneaking. The game then spawns patrols of mercenaries and professors for the player to sneak past or pick off, or charm into not minding their presence. The player works their way through the dungeon. As the quest is a thieving quest generated by the Thieves guild, high value items such as jewelry or gold is placed as loot. As the dungeon is Dwemer filled with mages and mercenaries, a random assortment of high quality smithed Dwemer items and spell-books and enchanted items are placed as loot. The player then hits the boss room. The game chooses a group of mages and mercenaries exchanging blows with a small army of spheres, presenting an opportunity to sneak past in the confusion or help one side or the other pick off their opponents to decide the fight in their advantage. The reward in the boss chest is then rolled from a pool that selects for items flagged for Dwemer dungeons, and the fact the quest was given by the Thieves Guild, perhaps an expensive piece of Dwemer jewelry or a high quality Dwemer crossbow. So In all three instances, the same assets were used, but the game used procedural generation in the best possible way to make the quest feel relevant to the player's prior choices. The guiding hand to do the quest was done by the player's chosen faction, the enemies and bosses were set to be fun encounters based on the player's chosen play-style and items, and what the player finds as loot makes logical sense based on proper flagging in loot tables. Also, the dungeon itself can be made to be far higher quality than it otherwise might have been. As the same dungeon can be found from multiple quest paths, each faction doesn't need their own dedicated random generic dungeon pools. The shared pool could then be focused on to a much higher degree. This smaller pool can then be made to be fun to fight through AND sneak through, AND explore, AND have a unique idea to make it distinct from other dungeons of a similar type. AND AND This system would even allow reuse of these dungeons if the player does multiple factions. A player who cleared out the ruin for the Mage's guild could come back as a Companion to rescue their fellow students when Bandits seized the opportunity of a cleared ruin to set up a base and seize the students as hostages for ransom. A current Thief and former Companion could sneak past their prior hirers to grab a rare artifact held by one of the professors. The dungeon's now higher quality level design and radiant quest and ai systems are now working together to re-contextualize an area and create emergent storytelling that feels like its reacting to the players past choices, when its only pulling from tables and reusing assets.

Bethesda has been experimenting with things one game after another for decades, this issue now is that the time between titles is approaching a decade in a time where folks have ever dwindling memories and attention spans. Daggerfall was extremely experimental in its world design and really really broken, but it moved the game on to where Morrowind scaled back in scope but got much more rich. Oblivion refined and to streamlined Morrowind while Skyrim really nailed the polish and refinement of that system at the cost of losing some of that richness from previous titles. Starfield is the proving ground for the toolkit that Bethesda uses going forward and in all the core competencies of gameplay such as movement, traversal, hit detection and certainly graphics it nails it. The foundation is very solid, now they can simply flesh it out going forward.

Bethesda did cut out a lot of the more ambitious parts of Oblivion when they made Skyrim, but they also added in dragons as a dynamic element. I can't tell you how many times a dragon attack interrupted a cutscene or sidetracked me away from a different task I was doing. There are so many ways TES VI could add other dynamic elements to established mechanics. The big one I think would be cool is an Original Sin-inspired magic system. Like a fireball could be an AoE spell if you hit some brush or a lightning bolt could also be an AoE spell in a wet swamp. Ice could help you slide down hills faster or run across bodies of water. Or the archery could take some elements from how reactive enemies are Resident Evil 4. In that game, enemies trip when they are shot in the knee mid-step and they drop their weapons if the player shoots their hand (that feels a whole lot different to me than, say, a set percentage chance to drop the weapon upon any attack). Suits of armor have gaps that need to be exploited.

The most important thing for Bethesda is to improve the NPC AI, both in terms of character interaction and combat AI. I wonder if it would be possible to implement something like the Nemesis system from Shadow of Mordor to their RPGs to enable NPCs to respond in realistic ways

One thing that would be awesome in a future fallout game is Skyrim’s dual wielding system. Like a melee weapon in one hand and pistol in the other solid snake style. Or 2 pistols. Or 2 melee weapons. Or a mac11 style smg and a sawed off double barrel. They could also tie it into fallout 4’s weapon modding system where removing a weapon’s stock would make it dual-wieldable, as well as making it less accurate and using a different perk/skill. I love games with wacky dual wielding combinations, and I feel like we take that for granted in Skyrim.

I left 8 comments to help with the RU-vid algorithm.because people always say leave likes and comments it helps alot .

I have a feeling es6 was originally going to go the same route as fo76, co-op multiplayer. But they probably scrapped that idea after the 76 backlash. But anyway my expectations are very low after playing Starfield...

What I hope for TES6: - More ways to customize your build (return of attributes, more scaling, new gameplay feats from unlocking "perks") - Combo perks (like destruction+archery for elemental arrows, or plus alteration for homing arrows; alchemy+enchanting for "permanent poison effect on weapon"; speech+illusion for debuff auras) - More complexity, freedom and care for magic (scaling spells, more variety inside the schools, spell combos and more environmental interaction, spell perks like in Forgotten Magic mod, spell creation and proper magic weapons, like staves and scepters) - Higher limit for conjuration minions (let's make a small army!) - More accurate stealth system, with intuitive mechanics and proper line of sight (also spells from Illusion to create proper distractions) - More physically accurate combat, with push-pull-fall damage (and spells!), precise hitboxes and proportional damage (head > torso > limbs) - More dynamic combat (dodge, rolls, blinks, parrying, magical melee combat (spell shields with timed blocking mechanics, elemental hand-to-hand perks). - More quality of life UI improvements - Better AI and better follower system (lets make them more than just summon-like allies). - And, last but definitely not least, MORE INTERESTING, REACTIONAL AND OVERARCHING MAIN STORY, with less fetching quests, more sides to pick, decisions that matter and change the world state around, and NPCs that we care about.

Solid video, as per usual. Bethesda's games are my jam, so your perspectives are appreciated. The implementations of ladders, jump melee strikes, & pulling up from ledges has me hoping Acrobatics & Athletics finding their way into perks. Sea ship combat seems plausible after Starfield's preem ship stuff, including its customization. I'm hopeful. Thanks for the vid.

I hope they add back events that change the world, like in Oblivion.

wait there's 1 NPC that has a schedule in Starfield, the bookseller in Akila City, she disappears at dawn and comes back at around 7AM. Someone follow her.

I felt for all this time they didn’t really take much risks with this game. Yeah if you like the standard Bethesda experience it’s fine. I just wish they pushed the envelope a little more with the story and world design considering how gaming has changed since Fallout 4.

I'm done with them if they screw up the Oblivion remaster/remake. If Skyblivion is a far better game I'm done with them.

Random opinion, but I think having a level cap goes a very long way to adding some diversity and replay value to their games. Fallout 4 was wrong in allowing your character to get all perks and skills, because it means you've seen most of everything in a single playthrough, but also lack a lot of variety in between you build. Past a certain level, they're all just the same person, which was not the case in Fallout 3, Oblivion, New Vegas, mainly due to limited resource allocation. If this design choice was too constricting, they could've allowed us the opportunity to either reroll or "prestige" our character upon reaching the Unity for an additional endgame cycle.