After the massive blunder of Starfield, I cannot see how Elder scrolls 6 could possibly be successful. Everything points to the fact that they knew that the game was not even half finished, in my opinion, with major glaring issues, and they decided to just send it off anyway. The difference between this game and Oblivion is that this time, it wasn't light-hearted and filled with silly mistakes that made people laugh. It instead inside it a lot of anger and disbelief as to how they could fail so spectacularly with a AAA title...
But this has not been the first time that Bethesda as a whole has failed, and is in fact the third strike. They failed spectacularly with Fallout 4, which took the gaming industry by surprise after seeing how poorly developed it was, and the extreme low quality of the story, how unfinished the game was, how simply broken many areas and features were, I could talk about it for hours. Biggest thing to me was the poorly made settlement system that barely even worked because there was no snapping, and it felt like playing an indie game. The second strike was Fallout 76, crazy how disappointing his game was and even to this day is still broken and in disarray. It's only been able to survive purely because of microtransactions...
Then, you look at what most people are playing right now, and it's Skyrim. Above any other game out there, it's Skyrim. The similarity between Skyrim and Elder scrolls 6 doesn't really matter that much, the age is what you should really focus on. Why are people playing such an old game still to this day? Hint, it's because every single other title they've released has been a disappointment.
Personally, I have no faith or belief that Elder scrolls 6 will be anything other than a colossal disappointment. I don't see how Bethesda as a studio can possibly manage to produce AAA titles anymore, I think they have a budget of half of what they need to have, and it's only getting smaller each year as costs are being cut, and People are being laid off, stakeholders and stockholders want more revenue growth than ever before. It's unbelievable honestly. They expect infinite growth with minimal headcount that keeps shrinking
I’m hopeful but cautious.
For me the big issue with Starfield was the obsession with massive maps/worlds etc that were either empty or filled with junk. The travel system and loading screens also made the game as a whole completely disjointed.
The only reason I’m hopeful is the continuous map as opposed to content being spread way too thin on thousands of planets. If they get the content more dense then hopefully it’ll be at least half decent.
I’m totally with you on Bethesda / Microsoft trying to get the most money out of the least effort and that’s my biggest reason I’m not getting hyped for it. The goal for them is currently the most cash rather than making the best game possible. Annoyingly this has infected pretty much all big game studios these days. Ironically, that approach is better for the short term but horrendous for the long term outlook.
I’ll be sticking to the golden rule though: NO PREORDERS!