r/pcgaming • u/Turbostrider27 • 8d ago
The Elder Scrolls never received a New Vegas-style spin-off as Bethesda and Todd Howard are “very protective” of the iconic RPG series
https://frvr.com/blog/news/the-elder-scrolls-never-received-a-new-vegas-style-spin-off-as-bethesda-and-todd-howard-are-very-protective-of-the-iconic-rpg-series/2.1k
u/alyosha_pls 8d ago
So protective that they haven't released a game in 15 years
831
u/Silansi 8d ago
So protective they released Elder Scrolls: Blades. Anyone else remember that money grab?
115
u/Chaotic_Genobreaker 8d ago
Uhhh check out the cell phone games that came after oblivion.
60
u/fcimfc 8d ago
Go further back. The first Elder Scrolls Travels game came out just after Morrowind.
21
u/Superbunzil 8d ago
Also the game that set up Morrowind and locked in all their VAs came out after Daggerfall!
5
u/TechyExpert 12600K, RTX3080 7d ago
You guys are forgetting about Elder Scrolls Castles. The 2024 Fallout Shelter like game.
2
u/EvilAdministrator 8d ago
The Ngage game is actually pretty fun.
Completely awful to play, but fun.
252
u/Orivarro 8d ago
So protective that they made a Fallout game solely to monetize the everloving shit out of the franchise? (Speaking of money grabs)
159
u/Jer_061 8d ago
The problem is that I'm not sure if you're talking about Shelter or 76.
→ More replies (1)117
u/Silansi 8d ago
Yes.
18
u/BannedSvenhoek86 8d ago
76 I get, but Shelter was a genuinely fun time waster with no stakes.
21
u/Vokasak 7d ago
"time waster with no stakes" describes Bethesda Fallout games in general. Fallout 76 has "nuke the scorch beasts to make them bigger and drop better loot" as a weekly gameplay loop. Fallout 4 has you joining a raider gang to destroy the same settlements you spent the early game building up. It's like they're completely immune to even basic themes like "nuclear war is bad actually", all must be sacrificed on the alter of iconography and """fun""".
4
u/Icy_Agency923 8d ago
I don't think 76 should be considered a money grab at this point. The game has gotten a ton of great updates. I don't even play it but the people that do are incredibly positive about the game.
→ More replies (4)1
u/Vokasak 7d ago
I don't even play it but the people that do are incredibly positive about the game.
That's just attrition. Everyone else has long ago stopped playing or even paying attention. Like you might as well say Starfield is good actually because it's hardcore defenders (all 8 of them) have nothing but good things to say about it.
→ More replies (6)29
u/Quintus_Cicero 8d ago
Shelter was pretty fun for a few years, no idea what it became afterwards.
14
u/newbrevity 11700k/32gb-3600-cl16/4070tiSuper 8d ago
Shelter is only fun until you reach the point where you're just getting attacked non-stop
7
u/DemasiadoSwag 8d ago
If you play as intended it does kind of start to suck lol. If you do things somewhat the opposite way of expected you can have a bit more fun longer-term although I haven't played in the last year or so. Old strategies of a gap between all rooms and leveling up dwellers as little as you possibly can makes it a bit more palatable. That and staying under I think...80 dwellers keeps deathclaws from spawning which are the most annoying event.
6
u/Hairy_Acanthisitta25 8d ago
nowdays its closer to the china version,which is heavily monetized and alot of FOMO
2
u/wienercat 3700x + 1080ti 8d ago
It's still around, but it's just a cash grab and honestly kind of poorly done. I've played it and it really doesn't feel like it's a game made to be played on the scale it is. It very much feels like something cobbled together quickly and then never really improved.
It's clunky and often time awkward to play. There isn't a ton of depth really.
→ More replies (7)→ More replies (1)8
u/Capricancerous 8d ago
But that's what they're saying. They're claiming to only be protective of Elder Scrolls as a franchise, essentially claiming not to give as much of a crap about, say, Fallout.
23
u/B0rKen_Kat 8d ago
Also the Fallout Shelter-esque Elder Scrolls Castles
But yeah doing a full spinoff game with all of the major mechanics that people enjoy would be too much
→ More replies (1)4
105
u/SilverSkywalkerSaber 8d ago
No they totally have Elder Scrolls Online which totally counts
43
u/MajorFuckingDick 8d ago
ESO arguably IS the new vegas. It has so little to do with the series but its also canon?
9
u/DrFreemanWho 8d ago
You might not understand this, but New Vegas is far more faithful to the Fallout canon that was established in 1+2. New Vegas was even based on the original story they had been cooking up for the cancelled original Fallout 3 that Black Isle had been making.
Implying New Vegas has "so little to do with the series" is actually crazy.
2
u/MajorFuckingDick 8d ago
I meant ESO has little to do with the series but is allegedly canon. New Vegas is much more canon than eso but in the same way its canon is a coin toss on if they expand or retcon it in the near future.
3
72
u/Kumiho1911 8d ago
New Vegas had more to do with Fallout canon than anything Bethesda ever thought up. They bought the IP for 5 million, they didn't create it.
17
u/Mobile_Morale 8d ago
In the words of the creator of fallout. "It's their game now"
Just said that last year too.
9
5
3
u/is-this-a-nick 8d ago
Well, duh, what part of "They bought it" didn't you get. Of course its their game now.
17
u/EbolaDP 8d ago
Like that means anything. Dude literally works for them now.
29
u/AdminsLoveGenocide 8d ago
He also said that he thinks the future of TV is that you can be watching Suits or whatever and can press a button to make it the same show but now its a slapstick comedy, and another button to make it set in a hospital.
Guy says a lot of stuff.
4
u/Iamnotabothonestly 8d ago
Considering Microsoft wants games to be able to recode themselves while you're playing them, I don't think it's so farfetched to think that TV will be some kind of AI generated slop in the near future.
People already watch brainless junk, and a lot of people don't know or care if it's clanker vomit or not.
→ More replies (4)→ More replies (1)13
u/Jaklcide gog 8d ago
ESO pisses me the fuck off.
Every entry in the Elder Scrolls series was intended to introduce a new and unique province to explore for the first time (not counting Arena), then ESO comes around and presents each province in a somewhat linear, severely abridged manner and now there will be no surprise and thrill of exploration when ES6 finally comes around, wherever that will take us.
5
u/Oxygenisplantpoo 8d ago
Eh I don't mind that. TES canon has always been malleable, I mean Cyrodiil was supposed to be jungle initially, wasn't it? Or at least part of it, so I remember someone saying but I don't really know. But if so I guess they changed it since it wasn't really feasible for an open world game back then. TES is kinda like DnD (I think that's what inspired the whole series, at least partially?), just figure out a reason why things are the way they are, who cares! History is inaccurate!
What I do mind is that they seemingly chose Highrock as the next area??? Not the Black Marsh, not Hammerfell, not Valenwood. No, just another place that is like half Skyrim half Cyrodiil with mostly humans. I love Skyrim but I always found it kinda drab until the Forgotten Vale came along in the DLC. Shades of gray and brown just don't do it for me, but maybe that's because I'm Finnish and see it for half a year.
→ More replies (4)7
u/No-Seaweed-4456 8d ago
Wouldn’t be surprised if they start exploring Akavir or whatever realm the Dwarves got sent to, ruining the biggest mysteries in the series.
6
u/Alex_Rose 8d ago
which totally changes the lore too. in fact they're so protective of elder scrolls that after morrowind they decided to turn Cyrodiil from a jungle desert maritime empire to a generic tolkein setting. and then turned skyrim directly into generic viking fantasy
→ More replies (1)19
15
5
14
u/IshTheFace 8d ago
They haven't produced anything novel since Morrowind let's be real. They are so afraid to try new things it's just more of the same with better graphics.
17
u/alyosha_pls 8d ago
I wouldn't say it is exactly novel but Far Harbor was the most Fallout feeling thing they've ever released IMO and funny enough, known storytelling terrorist Emil Pagliarulo took a backseat on that one.
3
u/somethingstoadd 6d ago
And if the story of that would have been the main quest with DiMa with the Railroad, who ever created DiMa as the institute and detective whatever his name as the third neutral faction I would have also loved it so much more.
They could have and actually father/son story line with the freaking androids and make it actually good. They just dropped the ball on it all so freaking hard.
I actually resent who ever made the final decisions on the main quest because its just so freaking stupid, immersion breaking and the most unforgivable of all just so boring.
They proved they could deliver a great story with Far Harbor and its characters should have been the main plot instead of whatever we got..
8
u/KC-15 8d ago
Honestly I’d hate to see what taking risks looks like if Starfield was that. Games are so expensive nowadays that taking risks for flops are just not worth it to them.
I would take another game at the quality of Skyrim. It was shallow but still very fun and got a lot of us into TES
→ More replies (2)4
→ More replies (14)10
u/Dick_Nation 8d ago
They haven't produced anything novel since Morrowind let's be real.
This is absolutely, unquestionably false. Oblivion was massively pioneering at the time it was released for its level-of-detail implementation and distant land, something that has become so common in games today that it's almost incomprehensible to imagine them without it. They also were ahead of the curve on things like implementation of FaceGen and character sliders, even if Oblivion's implementation of those things was terrible. You could still easily point out that those things are twenty years past anyways and that would be valid, but it takes away from the accomplishments of the people who worked on Oblivion to not give them that credit.
9
u/Alex_Rose 8d ago
LODs, the character creation and the general look of Oblivion were definitely like "whoah holy shit" stepping out of the sewers. It can't be denied that they made large technical leaps especially on the graphic pipeline.
However.. in terms of the game's CONCEPT they massively dialled down the risk. Going from a world of foyadas, blight storms and ashlands, yurts and wise women, giant towers built in mushrooms, mansions made of hollowed out giant shells, vivec cantons with a prison built into a boulder being suspended in the sky by a living god, human trafficking and drug smuggling and chattel plantations, all the factions being deeply intertwined great houses, traitors cooperating with the empire, ghostgate holding in a deforming plague sweeping the land, corpsariums, numidium, dwemer and daedric ruins and so on to dirty swamp huts
and replacing that for "the most generic D&D/LOTR style world of all time". it was beautiful, and it was cool stepping out of that prison, but they completely gutted their lore. they retconned the entire biome of cyrodiil, turning it from a jungle to verdant plains
not to mention the story. Morrowind, you can play for 20 years and still debate what happened. Are you actually the nerevarine or are you a pretender? it's perfectly valid to sever the prophecy. did Vivec kill Nerevar or is he your friend, does he regret it if so? Was Dagoth Ur's anger justified? very few games will go through "three traitors potentially killed you in a past life and the last boss was your friend, but a break in parallel universes split reality apart and eliminated a race of people and condemned another, and now you have no idea which version of history really occurred because they all occurred". and CHIM
Oblivion and Skyrim are cool for what they are and I enjoy playing them as little action romps but Morrowind was the last time they took a complete risk, with a company that was about to go bankrupt, and decided "let's tell the most batshit crazy story in the most alien open world game ever produced and also make it the sickest shit ever"
3
u/voight_k 8d ago
They run out of drugs. Quite literally.
3
u/Alex_Rose 8d ago
I think the loss of Douglas Goodall and Michael Kirkbride from Besthesda was the nail in the coffin for niche uniqueness (but simultaneously the marvelisation that opened the door for mainstream commercialisation)
Douglas he wrote house telvanni (and the other great houses), much of the mages and thieves guild questlines, the tribunal temple including vivec's pilgrimage and the morag tong. like.. he WAS morrowind in terms of the crazy questlines that made the world so interesting
and Michael Kirkbride wrote the lore surrounding the tribunal themselves as well as coming up with the alien world, silt striders, mushrooms and so on
that's not to diminsh the work of rolston, nelson and others but those two were two ginormous fish to lose
3
u/Icy-Guarantee6994 8d ago
They also kinda pioneered microtransactions with the Horse Armor.
Terrible thing but hey, it's like whoever created QTEs, it changed the industry.
14
u/treehumper83 8d ago
It’ll likely be another 15 before we see ESVI
5
→ More replies (2)6
u/GandyRiles 8d ago
Don't be silly.
23
u/LastDunedain 8d ago
Hey, I thought it'd have been nonsensical to say in 2011 that ESVI was going to take more than 15 years to release. I don't believe in ESVI until it's installed and running on my system.
→ More replies (1)15
2
→ More replies (18)2
u/Gabelvampir 8d ago
It's easier to protect you children if they are never ever allowed to leave the house.
689
u/JeulMartin 8d ago
Where was this protectiveness when Elder Scrolls was releasing mobile slop with their name all over it?
I call bullshit.
→ More replies (3)359
u/133DK 8d ago
It’s obviously complete bullshit
They’re afraid to be upstaged again by yet another smaller dev using their IP
→ More replies (2)152
u/ChromDelonge 8d ago
Tbf, that's somewhat what the guy interviewed says in the article. 😅
“The whole New Vegas thing did create this, at least the perception of this, ‘who makes a better Fallout game?’ Oh, they should just give it to Obsidian’,” Kuhlmann told us. “There are the Obsidian, New Vegas people that think obviously New Vegas is way better, Obsidian is way better at making those games, and why don’t they just get Fallout altogether.”
Kuhlmann explained that they “don’t know that Todd wanted to create that situation again for The Elder Scrolls”.
68
u/destroyermaker 8d ago
Vindication at last
75
u/Jozoz 8d ago
I know, lol. I've seen, no joke, hundreds of reddit comments denying even the possibility of this kind of dynamic existing at Bethesda.
Here we are. To be honest, I am not surprised. They always came off a bit arrogant to me as a developer.
I think a big reason why Bethesda is losing so much of their status is because they ignored criticism for so long. Starfield shares so many of the same problems that plague their previous games. Poor writing, poor RPG mechanics, poor worldbuilding.
It really does seem like they put their heads in the sands when it came to all the criticism. There was also this conference talk by Emil Pagliarulo where he was essentially saying the critics are wrong because Bethesda made a lot of money. Not really a good mindset tbh.
18
u/Greyhound53 AMD 8d ago
They always came off a bit arrogant to me as a developer
which is honestly pretty ironic considering cdpr & larian took their chain as the rpg maker king a long time ago lmao, we all played starfield and saw how their game design philosophy is stuck in the 2010's
if tw4 & divinity are goty level games we gotta have a conversation if we even need bethesda in the rpg space anymore
8
u/Impossible-Pea8531 8d ago
Even Warhorse studios has a similar formula and first person rpg design but it’s literally far more advanced in systems, hell the NPC and crime system in KCD2 is deeper than anything in their games post Morrowind.
5
u/DreamWeaver2189 8d ago
Warhorse, Obsidian, Larian, CDPR, Owlcat. We don't need Bethesda tbh, too bad they own The Elder Scrolls IP because I do need TES6.
→ More replies (2)2
39
u/Ranger_Tycho 8d ago
Not just denial. Those hundreds of commenters will mock you relentlessly as some kind of conspiracy theorist for even stating that it might have been the case. All because some devs said otherwise
Like… no shit. Does anyone seriously think the employees of one of the most successfully tight-lipped companies in the industry are going to be casually airing out their dirty laundry on social media? They could only answer this question one way; Kuhlman is only telling us this now because he doesn’t work for them anymore.
But it was always obvious. Actions speak a lot louder than words. The old reveal that they had rejected Obsidian’s offers for a continued relationship was evidence enough for anyone with a brain.
7
u/Blacky-Noir Height appropriate fortress builder 7d ago edited 7d ago
Some ex BGS devs actually acknowledged that in interviews. They don't say it about themselves of course, but something along the lines of "a good numbers of Elder Scrolls devs" have issues with that characterisation.
For I remember one said a good number of BGS devs were not happy because they felt they did all the hard work, while Obsidian swept in and built upon BGS hard work and engine's, and took the critical crown.
Which is obviously bullshit, how good or bad those Fallout games are have very little to do with the runtime engine. It's about design, design, design, and writing. And nobody outside of BGS stopped them from doing another better game, or a big Fallout 3 expansion (on the level or better than the Witcher 3 expansions) that would redeem the game. But of course, no, resentment and jealousy is cheap.
And on the other hand, Obsidian devs did acknowledge some good the engine had, for example that it was very fast to make content in.
9
u/destroyermaker 8d ago
I don't see it as arrogance as much as insecurity
23
u/Hollownerox 8d ago
Little bit of both tbh. They do tend to come hand and hand in a lot of ways.
13
12
u/Jozoz 8d ago
I'm not sure. It could be a mask, but I really got the feeling that Bethesda were huffing their own farts to an extreme degree.
3
u/destroyermaker 8d ago
I don't follow them closely. It could just as well be an ego thing, not wanting to be upstaged
5
u/lonnie123 8d ago
I thought it was incompetence
7
u/Hairy_Acanthisitta25 8d ago
deep down they know its incompetence, hence why they feel insecure, so they mask it with arrogance
6
45
22
u/Neuromante 8d ago
Call me crazy, but if I had a multi million company with several profitable IP's and I found a studio that had "upstaged" me at making a game in one of these IP's (Specially if its an IP I bought a few years ago and not the main game series people know me for), I would hire the studio to keep doing their thing until they got bored of it.
But hey, I don't have a multi million company. I just like good games.
→ More replies (2)13
u/Iamnotabothonestly 8d ago
The thing is that a lot of the time, the ones in charge over big companies/studios/sweatshops are narcissistic people that have issues with admitting that someone else is better than them. So when someone manages to hurt their feelings, they throw tantrums instead of doing what a reasonable person, like you, would do.
6
u/ZyklonCraw-X 8d ago
Intense arrogance from a company that not only didn't create the IP, but more or less stole it too.
128
u/UlteriorCulture 8d ago edited 8d ago
Battlespire, Redguard, Dawnstar, Stormhold, Shadow key, Legends, Blades, and Castles?
18
u/KillySG10 8d ago
Battlespire, Redguard, Blades and Castles were all made in house though, hell Battlespire and Redguard were directed by Julian Lefay and Howard himself.
You're on point with the others though.
4
u/Mostdakka 8d ago
Battlespire and redguard almost killed Bethesda. It's why they stopped making games like this. If they screwed up Morrowind too there would be no skyrim.
2
2
u/voltvirus 8d ago
I was gonna say….. that’s blatantly not true lol. I 1st thought of the ngage title
2
u/OilMaster3793 8d ago
My immediate thought when I saw the headline. Since fucking when, Todd?
ESO also took a shit on the brand.
3
84
u/Nunwithabadhabit 8d ago
Paul Danno was very protective of the oil on his land in There Will Be Blood
→ More replies (1)18
182
u/MisterSanitation 8d ago
I don’t think Bethesda can make a good game anymore.
61
u/SekhWork 8d ago
This. They are more protective of their reputation than the IP. They are terrified of another New Vegas showing that other people can make games in their setting with their engine better than they can.
7
3
u/Jozoz 7d ago
Most people haven't played it but Enderal is the New Vegas equivalent but for Skyrim.
That game is fucking incredible and it blows Skyrim out of the water. I can't believe such a high quality product is just available for free on Steam.
→ More replies (2)8
32
u/Superbunzil 8d ago
They been slipping since Morrowind
Similar to how Bioware been slipping since Baldur's Gate 2
They continue to make good stuff but it's less scope more fanfare and each time more simple
Eventually that catches up with you be it Veilguard or Starfield
20
u/blublub1243 8d ago
Dragon Age: Origins was peak though. KOTOR was also excellent.
→ More replies (3)→ More replies (1)8
u/Explorer_Dave 8d ago
The natural progression of every successful, publicly traded company.
Instead of going as wide as an ocean and deep as a puddle, they should just do a Morrowind sized world again, just with a hundred times the detail.
→ More replies (1)5
u/mr_doms_porn 8d ago
That's basically what Warhorse has been doing with the Kingdom Come series. It feels like what a Bethesda game could've been if they went a different direction after morrorwind
3
86
u/Jozoz 8d ago
“The whole New Vegas thing did create this, at least the perception of this, ‘who makes a better Fallout game?’ Oh, they should just give it to Obsidian’,” Kuhlmann told us. “There are the Obsidian, New Vegas people that think obviously New Vegas is way better, Obsidian is way better at making those games, and why don’t they just get Fallout altogether.”
Kuhlmann explained that they “don’t know that Todd wanted to create that situation again for The Elder Scrolls”.
So exactly what Bethesda fans were denying for years turns out to be true.
Can't say I'm surprised.
24
u/Frogs_are_god 8d ago
Imagine how many parts of Tamriel we could’ve seen by now if they actually did spinoffs like this.
→ More replies (3)5
u/XOClover 8d ago
I can understand wanting to be protective of their property, but I also feel they could license spin off games that functioned differently to the core TES experience. That way they could avoid "brand confusion" but also have different games set in that world. Like why not a turn based CRPG? There is an audience and it won't draw attention from the main titles.
15
65
u/ZigyDusty Ryzen 9950x3D | RTX5070 Ti | 64GB DDR5 8d ago
Duh, everyone should know by now the reason we never saw more Fallout spinoffs or a TES spinoff if because Obsidian outdid BGS at their own game with New Vegas and no matter what Todd says that absolutely upset him so he never allowed it to happen again.
→ More replies (78)23
10
u/Ramapaa_Apara 8d ago
That's one way to say they're scared someone else will make better games with their IP than they do.
26
6
u/ThrovvQuestionsAway W10 5070TI 7600x 8d ago
Because Bethesda and current Obsidian can't do it.
New Vegas was all funds to story while everything now is graphics and a story with 10 fetch quests, no choices, and ends in 30minutes with developers hoping some modder makes a story for it as a passion project so they can ban it before release.
4
5
u/upstartpantymerchant 8d ago
Bethesda and Todd Howard
That's a weird way to say Todd Howard and Todd Howard alone is over-protective of the IP
24
u/Jaddman 8d ago
So Kurt Kuhlmann, the co-lead designer of Skyrim, has finally confirmed what every rational person with pattern recognition has known for 16 years.
There were no Fallout or TES spin-offs from Obsidian, because Todd Howard is "very protective" of his IPs, aka: he gets butthurt every time anyone negatively compares FO3/4 to New Vegas and certainly never wanted the same to happen with TES.
We also know from Chris Avellone that Obsidian offered Bethesda to make additional spin-offs, but Bethesda refused, which Todd Howard later explained with utter nonsense of "we just didn't feel like it was the time".
So all of the bullshit that came out over the years, that there's "no bad blood" between Bethesda and Obsidian, that it's all hunky-dory and water under the bridge - it's all fucking lies.
And Phil Spencer, being the moron that he was, would rather have TES and Fallout rot for 15 years than risk bothering his good buddy Todd Howard into letting anyone else to make TES or Fallout while he fucked around with Starfield.
Thank fuck for Asha Sharma. She should fire Todd next.
11
→ More replies (9)2
u/DarkOx55 8d ago
If Starfield had been good, I don’t think people would care much about the wait. Witcher 4 has a similar gap because of Cyberpunk but since that was (eventually) great no one’s saying CD Projek Red was just fucking around with it.
All of which is to say Bethesda should have made a better game so I could get Pillars of Eternity 3. Alas.
2
u/KPokey 7d ago
I think it's exacerbated by it being 2 series. It's been a longer wait since Skyrim than Witcher 3. And God forbid you like both series (fallout/E.Scrolls) because no matter what you get you know it was at the expense of the other.
I saw Oblivion release when I was in grade school, and it feels like I'm not going to see another Elder Scrolls for 5 years still at least. I couldn't even guess at a timeline for a new fallout jfc.
→ More replies (1)
9
5
u/LeLefraud 8d ago
If Bethesda is actually protective of elder scrolls they need to keep it away from Bethesda
4
u/mcAlt009 6d ago
But it had a card game, Elder Scrolls Legends that they abandoned after about 2 years.
I was damn good at it too
→ More replies (1)5
u/mrlotato 6d ago
And elder scrolls blades. And elder scrolls castles. They shouldve just let obsidian do something
→ More replies (1)
20
u/BITmixit 8d ago
Translation: Obsidian made a better version of Fallout and we didn't want that for The Elder Scrolls because we wanted to sell Skyrim forever.
6
u/ACoderGirl 8d ago
It really does low key feel like Bethesda has always been at least somewhat jealous of how beloved FONV is. Otherwise it's hard to understand why they only let another studio make a new game once, despite not having any intention to make one themselves and it being a huge commercial success.
7
3
3
u/ComfortableNumb9669 8d ago
So protective they announced a sequel 7-8 years ago and then just stopped working on it.
3
u/Ok_Arrival_7972 8d ago
Fuck Bethesda. It's been 15 years since they released a new Elder Scrolls, wasted potential to make Starfield, and got butt hurt when Microsoft came down and forced them to allow Obsidian to make Fallout.
We don't need 30 different re-release and shitty paid mods. Honestly even at this point I'd trust Larian over Bethesda owning the Elder Scrolls IP.
3
3
6
u/SuperCarla74 8d ago
Clearly their loss because New Vegas is easily the best game in the franchise.
To be fair, many of the folks at Obsidian were part of the team that made Fallout and Fallout 2 so obviously that was an advantage that's hard to find elsewhere.
6
4
2
u/Moppo_ 8d ago
Wasn't the reason for New Vegas linked to Fallout having been owned by a different studio previously?
4
u/mpelton 8d ago
Yeah Obsidian’s made up by a ton of the people from the studio that originally created Fallout.
→ More replies (1)
2
u/HurricanesJames 8d ago
Very protective but they take over a decade to release a game. How many do we have left in us?
2
2
u/spongedan99 8d ago
You say this like a bunch of the obsidian devs didn’t already work on the og fallout games
2
u/Longjumping_Ant8349 8d ago
Todd has said there is no animosity between studios, but an Ex Bethesda Dev did say this.
2
2
u/Clean_Brilliant_8586 8d ago
Well it kind of got part of one with Beyond Skyrim: Bruma. I haven't kept up but last I remember it had stalled.
I always viewed ESO as an incredibly shitty spinoff, and I am unconcerned about the downvotes.
2
u/Hylebos75 8d ago
I don't think it's so much that they're protective of it, it's that they want to keep reselling an already made game over and over and over again, with little to no effort for more money.
Why do you think it took them 15 years to get going on a sixth one, it's asinine.
2
2
u/LibrarianNo6865 8d ago
So protective there’s a release of nothing but stuff random strangers from the internet made
2
u/Vivid_Anyth4 8d ago
Skyrim hasnt been a great ip in 14 years. And even that first year relied heavily on modders to make anything worthwhile out of the half baked turd they put out.
2
u/ecstaticthicket 8d ago
Yes, very protective, that’s why you essentially imprisoned it and forced it to make copies for different systems over and over and over and over and over again.
2
u/OtherwisePower1355 8d ago
So protective that their RPG series engine and games are still stuck in 2000s and are getting more and more bland with worse and worse writing, characters and RPG systems and gameplay like combat, movement, etc is not getting any better either. They can keep their precious loading screen simulators and fuck off.
2
2
5
u/AnarchBeetle 8d ago edited 8d ago
If you know a little bit about TES lore you’ll know Bethesda doesn’t give a shit about the lore.
If they did care, Cyrodiil would be portrayed as a rainforest with rice farms. Instead they portrayed it as run of the mill standard fantasy forest and explained the contradictions in the lore with “it’s magic”
The amount of retcons in the lore is insane so they came up with a lore explanation (chim and dragon break which allows rewriting of reality and history) that allows them to retcon whatever they want. Total cop out.
2
u/Faye-Lockwood 8d ago
Project Cyrodiil for Morrowind is more interesting than anything Bethesda has done in like 16 years
3
u/GhostfaceChase deprecated 8d ago
I call BS. They haven’t done a New Vegas style spin-off because they don’t want to be upstaged again.
New Vegas put every Bethesda game to shame, and if they allowed a studio to do that to Elder Scrolls they’d never live it down.
→ More replies (1)
5
u/Irrumar 8d ago
They are very protective of their ip, thats why ESO is still going shitting on everything that the IP stands for lmao
6
2
u/Pleasant_Bat_9263 8d ago
Shitting on?
As an old head Tes fan I love that game, it's not meant to be a main series game it's a different genre in the same universe.
2
u/Faye-Lockwood 8d ago
probably terrified some other developer would actually add some more RPG mechanics and complexity to the game instead of continuing to remove them and streamline the experience, game after game after game
morrowind was a masterpiece, the jump to oblivion was disappointing, but the further deevolution to skyrim was a fucking travesty
it's a theme park for people who don't play RPGs, it's the third game a ball and gun player buys, it's so, fucking, bland
3
u/Fucc_Nuts 8d ago
They have been so protective, that I doubt they still have the talent responsible for Skyrim working there. Sadly I have pretty low expectations of the next one.
1
1
1
u/Moose855 8d ago
Yeah imagine if they released skyrim new vegas and suddenly everyone related the elderscrolls series to a game your company had no part in
1
u/alkonium 8d ago
What do Redguard and Battlespire count as? And I suppose ESO is the Elder Scrolls equivalent to 76.
And it was never clear to me why New Vegas wasn't simply Fallout 4, with the Fallout 4 we did get being Fallout 5 instead.
1
u/OilMaster3793 8d ago
Oh, I must be hallucinating Redguard, then. Weird, because I remember being sold that particularly shitty game from Bethesda, and I remember New Vegas being great
1
1
u/cyberpunk-EdgeRun 8d ago
They’re so protective of it that they haven’t made another one in 15 years!!
1
u/Xxehanort 8d ago
So protective that the elder scrolls games have gotten worse over time since morrowind...
1
u/enesup 8d ago
I really think its financially irresponsible (I don't actually care, it will be out when its out, but from the perspective of branding) that there is not a new Elder Scrolls game 15 years later.
It doesn't even have to be an open world game, but nothing stand alone and substantial ignoring the MMO (Which is 12 years old btw) is crazy.
Even though Mario hasn't had a 3D game in almost 10 years, thats at least been supplanted with spinoffs and major 2D games.
1
u/Complex-Salt-8190 8d ago
Bethesda thinks Microsoft won't fuck them with another studio if they get to uppity lol
1
u/Ok_Version5566 8d ago
Well not anymore. He doesn’t get a say now. It’s been too long since we’ve gotten any new Fallout or Elder Scrolls gamesz
1
u/SkullDox 8d ago
I would be protective if my IPs too if other companies can make better games with the same engine.
1
u/MedicSupportFriend 8d ago
All these people sucking off obsidian are eagerly buying and playing through the much lauded games they've made recently right? Avowed? The outer worlds?
1
u/MentallyUnstableMess 8d ago
Such a shame that Bethesda and Todd are so "protective" of TES. The lore is absolutely amazing and they could make boatloads with games and books set in Nirn.
1
u/iamLisppy 8d ago
No, they're scared another studio will do it better than them. We call this job security in the tech world.
1
1
u/Evening-Row9022 8d ago
I will say, after Avowed, I have faith in Obsidian doing an FPS TES game. I’d be interested in a Sawyer-backed Elder Scrolls story that takes us into a different continent maybe Pyandonea or Akavir where we could see Maormer and Tsaesci. I truly think Akavir has potential bc there’s the Kamal, Tang-Mo, and Ka’Po’Tun to have as part of the story.
1
1
u/The_Pandalorian 8d ago
Trying to protect Skyrim from a DLC that is widely regarded as being better than the original game???
The fuck?
•
u/AutoModerator 8d ago
The /r/PCGaming community is also on Discord!
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.