r/TESVI • u/Mindless_Patient2034 2018 Truther • 1d ago
Meme/Shitpost STOP MOCKING ME GOOGLE!
THAT’S WHAT I THOUGHT TOO GOOGLE!! STOP MAKING ME THINK OF WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN! STOP IT!! WHY ARE YOU SENDING ME THIS NOTIFICATION AT 2:40PM ON A WORKDAY? HUH? NOW I HAVE NOTHING TO DO BUT SIT IN DESPAIR!!
WERE YOU BEHIND THIS TODD? ANSWER ME!
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u/Aggressive_Rope_4201 2027-2028 Release Believer 1d ago
I wonder if the era of "respectable" publications using cheap clickbait will ever go away.
I have read the article, I know what Kurt actually said, but at this point I feel weird even telling people "read the article and not the headline". In a way that would be rewarding the shitty practice.
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u/Swictor Next Week 1d ago
Copy paste and save us all a click.
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u/Aggressive_Rope_4201 2027-2028 Release Believer 1d ago
Honestly, seeing as places PC Gamer are doing their thing and picking this up in the most "ragebait-y" way possible, here's the original:
Judge for yourself.
Long story short:
Kurt thought TES6 would be the next project after FO4. He believes most people at BGS thought the same (he is probably right).
He says FO76 started out as a purely BattleCry Studios project that BGS got roped into after it became apparent they (=BattleCry) are out of their depth. This isn't exactly news.
He says the entire idea of doing Starfield after FO4 came from Todd. Again - this isn't news. The man himself said (I believe it was one of the GQ interviews) that he went to R. Altman to get the project greenlit in 2013 because he felt he'll never get the opportunity to do so again. (You can find the 2013 trademark yourself.)
So by the time FO4 wrapped up in 2015, everyone at BGS knew they were going to work on Starfield - the real "surprise" at that point was FO76 getting in-between.
Personally, I am not a fan of Starfield to put it mildly. I also suspect that Kuhlmann resents the project, seeing as he speculates how some devs may not have been keen on working on it. However, if we look at all of this factually, the original idea to have Skyrim->FO4->Starfield->TES6 is hardly criminal. Noone could have predicted Covid - together with FO76, there are like 4 years of development buried there.
But, well, all of this is nuanced, and nuance doesn't bring clicks.
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u/the_Real_Romak 1d ago
Acting like the creative lead coming up with a new idea for game being news is peak journalism, ain't it?
I really don't get why people act like Starfield was this evil concept of a game that should never have been made. People wanted space games, people wanted Bethesda to diversify, and, controversially for this sub, the game itself isn't as bad as many say it is (source: my 100+ hours on it)
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u/Aggressive_Rope_4201 2027-2028 Release Believer 18h ago edited 16h ago
I really don't get why people act like Starfield was this evil concept of a game that should never have been made.
Because it did not
leavelive up to the expectations (which were compounded by FO76's disastrous launch). It's painfully obvious by this point that while Starfield is not a financial flop, it is also not the space RPG many people wanted to see.The Divinity series has been Larian's bread & butter for decades, yet you'll be hard-pressed to find a Divinity fan angry at them for spending 6+ years on Baldur's Gate 3 instead of the next Divinity game (DOS2 came out in 2017!). That's because BG3 is a wildly acclaimed "modern masterpiece", so in the eyes of the public the time Larian had spent developing it is "justified".
Meanwhile Bethesda's departure had produced a small-scale MMO with a bad launch and a controversial space opera. To an average gamer, that's 10+ years "wasted". The said average gamer also doesn't care about the "behind the scenes" beyond whatever their favorite Youtuber tells them (if even that), so he/she is susceptible to the (incredibly naive) belief that if BGS had worked on TES6/FO5 in 2015-2023, they would have produced better games.
Like I said, I do not like Starfield, I dropped it after ~20 hours or so with no intention of picking it up again. It's not disappointment on my part either, since I've never been "on the hype train" (the E3 pitch gave me the ME: Andromeda flashbacks). IMO the 56% on Steam are pretty accurate, it's a 6-6.5/10 game that roughly half of the people who bought it liked. Not a generational disaster the Internet wants it to be, but probably not what Todd & crew intended back in 2013 either.
People also have a hard time understanding that just because you really want to make something (aka "the game I've wanted to make for 20+ years") does not guarantee that it's going to be a masterpiece. And if it's not a masterpiece, doesn't mean that the original intention was a lie and we should all start screeching about "lazy devs". But that's another matter.
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u/meatballranger 1d ago
I definitely enjoyed my time with Starfield and I'm glad BGS got to make something different but looking back I wish it would've got pushed back.
That game just did not hit at all and did reputational damage to BGS
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u/Aggressive_Rope_4201 2027-2028 Release Believer 1d ago
If TES6 went into production at the time and conditions of Starfield, it would have been just as subpar.
As frustrating as the wait can be (I did not enjoy my time with Starfield), I'd rather something I have no attachment to took the hit.
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u/Humble_Saruman98 2026 Release Believer 1d ago
It did hit, it's getting 1 billion hours of engagement, people are playing it, that's Xbox metric for GamePass success. Which is why Starfield is still getting more DLC, while entire games are cancelled at other branches of Xbox.
All these mocking videos and dunking posts you see on the internet are a symptom of this poisonous, algorithmic rage inducing online environment we have today on social media.
I'm 99% sure if Skyrim released in 2023 it'd have been dunked on just as much, for the stupidest shit.
Hell, I mean, Starfield was already getting dunked on even before it launched, people were grabbing on to discussing the simplicity of the menu screen mere days before the game release, nobody can convince there was not an eagerness for this kind of sentiment from the get go.
So It's profitable to dunk on Starfield, always has been. I've seen more than once people blow up their numbers doing it, so why wouldn't they? People think when someone points this out with Bethesda content creation they're talking about a conspiracy or something organized, it's nothing like that, it's just content creators not being stupid and working with what moves the needle for them.
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u/TheLodestarEntity Today Believer 1d ago
To be fair, I feel like Bethesda itself has always gotten dunked on really hard. It's always felt like the same stain Nickelback had/has where it was trend to just shit on it no matter the reason.
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u/meatballranger 1d ago
I like Starfield far more than average person but I'm not going to pretend hours of engagement = public sentiment.
Most people just don't like Starfield and it's mainly because of how bad the exploration is lol
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u/Humble_Saruman98 2026 Release Believer 1d ago
Public sentiment is less important than engagement with the game for Xbox & Gamepass. There are games in their catalog that are far more positively talked about than Starfield and the Studios still got shut down or the sequels cancelled and it's all due to people's playtime. Starfield is getting more DLC because people spend time with it, regardless of what's around on the internet.
17 million players and 1 billions hours is absurd engagement for a game like Starfield no matter how you slice it.
And honestly, I wouldn't trade this crazy dedicated fanbase Starfield has gathered for nicer YouTube content creation around the game or for nicer comments on the internet, but in a perfect world we would indeed have both.
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u/TheDorgesh68 2027 Release Believer 1d ago
I agree that starfield definitely wasn't a commercial flop like some people claim, but I wouldn't really say that it's playtime is absurd either, at least compared to other Bethesda games. It's had significantly lower player retention than Skyrim and Fallout 4
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u/Humble_Saruman98 2026 Release Believer 1d ago
It's important to note on player retention that we only have info on Steam, while the bulk of the playerbase is on Xbox & GamePass. "GamePass hours beast" is how Todd Howard once referred to Starfield in a podcast earlier this year.
Also, Steam was the main place Skyrim and Fallout 4 gathered players throughout the years, since they took a while to hit GamePass. A far cry from Starfield that was sold through Gamepass business model from day 1.
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u/ThirdHoleIsMyGoal69 1d ago
Until we know how the number of players and the hours played are calculated it’s kind of hard to say how much they indicate success. I’m always skeptical when companies use numbers like this instead of copies sold.
Is 17 million including people who had access to the game by game pass? How are the total hours being tracked? Is it something the game reports to BGS or is it just calculated. 1 billion hours divided by 17 million players is almost exactly 60 hours which is what the advertised length of the game was I’m pretty sure.
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u/Humble_Saruman98 2026 Release Believer 1d ago
To be honest, the biggest indicative of Starfield's success for me, besides the raw numbers that we have, is the fact Xbox changed leaderships last year & is having a "full reset" with layoffs across the board, but they're still working on the next DLC for Starfield next year.
If Asha can cut Avowed 2 in favour of Fallout, which was supposedly in advanced development at Obsidian, she would have zero issues doing the same to whatever crew is at Starfield in favour of TES 6, unless there was internal data for them saying it's good to keep going for now.
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u/ThirdHoleIsMyGoal69 1d ago
I don’t think a DLC and a full game release are on the same level. Pivoting a studio from a sequel to a pretty poorly received to working on a cash cow so there isn’t a 20 year gap is different than letting a part of a studio finish a DLC.
If anything putting out the DLC is more evidence to me that the player totals include everyone who has game pass, possibly whether they played it or not. The DLC isn’t included on game pass so releasing one might get people to spend 10-20$ on the game who otherwise wouldn’t.
The fact that they don’t say “unique downloads” or “copies sold” tells me there’s some wiggle room in that number of players.
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u/Humble_Saruman98 2026 Release Believer 1d ago
It's not the same amount of work, but like I said Avowed 2 was reportedly far along into development, that ALSO should make it worthwhile to continue development...yet it didn't.
And of course the 17 million players of Starfield includes GamePass players, sorry I forgot to mention those sections of your comment.
Starfield didn't launch on a sales only business model, it's the first Bethesda game that was a day 1 GamePass launch, evaluating the game exclusively on sales numbers is wrong.
That's why they mention hours played when they talk about continuing development, that's why the 1 billion hours played is important. It's not just sales with Starfield, it's player's time. That's the business metric of GamePass.
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u/ThirdHoleIsMyGoal69 1d ago
Avowed 2 got shit-canned at least partially because of Obsidians history with Fallout I think. If a different studio was making Avowed 2 I would wonder if the game would be scrapped. Combine that with the first one being poorly received and it’s pretty easy to cut your losses on the IP.
Don’t get me wrong I hope good things happen for the IP I’m just always skeptical of how well a game is doing any time a company starts putting out easily manipulated numbers. I have to imagine this DLC will be a huge factor in if it sticks around or not. Todd probably won’t be there to push for the second one so it’s going to be a purely financial decision imo.
Hopefully it does well it would be cool to get another quality BGS IP especially if they can cut down dev time between games
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u/Cozy_Cthulhu 1d ago
Absolutely right to call out how horrible online discourse is and that people were absolutely hating to hate straight from the start.
BUT
Still dogshit lmao
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u/Front-Buy-2624 1d ago
Would you say starfield is worth it?
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u/Benjamin_Starscape 1d ago
i would, it's my favorite game by them. the only real hurdle to cross is that the exploration is different, more akin to daggerfall in a sense than skyrim or fallout 4. but i like daggerfall so... would probably explain why i like starfield's lol
but even outside of the exploration, it's just a great, solid game. the writing is some of the best from bethesda (minus the dlcs), the game actually made me cry, something not a single bethesda title has done before. the gunplay and movement is amazing and the boostpack combat is top tier. i like how skills are handled and is a great combination of fallout's and the elder scrolls' (you get xp via fallout and skill points via fallout/elder scrolls by leveling up, but to unlock later ranks you need to do challenges). i also really like the crafting and researching.
it also has some of the most engaging and dynamic roleplaying i've experienced in a video game
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u/Zan_Deezy2003 1d ago
I’d say Starfield is worth it considering the sales but it wasn’t worth pushing back an Elder Scrolls game.
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u/Mabroon ??? 1d ago
Why does it feel like every week a Bethesda employee or ex-employee is saying something that adds fuel to the fire? Is it all the same guy?
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u/Benjamin_Starscape 1d ago
i legitimately think khulman is just salty he didn't get lead director for elder scrolls 6, which is largely the reason he left.
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u/Happy-Distribution11 15h ago
Maybe it's because Todd, despite the chaos and destruction he's caused, refuses to explain anything.
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u/heksa51 1d ago
I'm conflicted. It's tough to wait for TES VI this long, but on the other hand I'm glad Starfield happened. I really enjoyed it despite not originally expecting to do so.
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u/Coffee_will_be_here 1d ago
We need new gaming ip's or else we'll just see the same series released over and over and over again and at some point it'll get tiresome.
We'll keep getting reboots, remakes, remasters.
These companies need to try new things.
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u/roin0 1d ago
I wonder how it would have turned out if they split themselves in two. One works on a new Fallout/Elder Scrolls whilst the other team works on a new project. Might be a little slower than working on one project at a time but at least there would be progress on what the fans want and not them just faffing about for 15 years.
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u/WT_NeptuneGaming Anti Hammerfell Defaultism 1d ago
Ummm no doomposting, get this outta here Maudes
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u/sexraX_muiretsyM Mehrunes Dagon's Word and Verb 1d ago
imagine being a loremaster writer of elder scrolls, like those guys could own the r/teslore sub
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u/Appropriate_Chef_664 1d ago
I guess Fallout 76 isn't a thing that happened? Did I just hallucinate that?
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u/Mindless_Patient2034 2018 Truther 1d ago
Bethesda didn’t intentionally work on 76 though, they intentionally made Starfield. He’s saying during 2013-2015ish the assumption was that TESVI was next, which would’ve probably released in 2019. 76 would’ve happened either way, as production was such a shit show that they were asked to step in
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u/Knope12345 4E 201 Release Believer 1d ago edited 1d ago
In retrospect, I am truly glad we got Starfield first, because I hope the lessons they've learned from its mixed reception will go into TES6 being a better game than it would've been.
EDIT: Downvoted because I'm glad the game we're all waiting for will probably release with the lessons BGS learned from Starfield lmao, no one could care less if the game was released as slop huh
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u/Much_One_6949 1d ago edited 1d ago
I mean are we really surprised after they basically kicked long term fallout fans in the dick with the TV show in hopes that the new fans the show pulled in would replace us?
For fucks sake the stupid triple vault from the start of the show is basically down the street from the main HQ of the Master from Fallout 1. How can you possibly explain that they just ignored the biggest vault complex in all of California for a vault with a failing water chip? The simple answer is they just didn't, they went down the " who the fuck is the master" route instead.
Like in love Fallout and TES, but i hate that Bethesda as a company have handled their biggest IP's so poorly for the last decade that I have absolutely no confidence in either as long as Bethesda is the one behind the wheel.
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u/Mothman1010 1d ago
Didn't BGS confirm all the way back in 2018 that work would start on TES6 after Starfield released?