Elder Scrolls 6

[Wayde Robson]

Hey Audioholics

Does anyone else here love the Elder Scrolls series?

I'm working on an article about gaming and I couldn't help but get into an aside about the loss of gaming's "middle market", which I think is worth an analysis on its own. The more I think about it, it's probably the biggest problem in gaming right now. It's also what IMHO, is going to kill the Elder Scrolls series.

I've absolutely loved every installment of Elder Scrolls. But there's a wide rift between why I liked Skyrim so much and my love for Daggerfall. The series is being increasingly streamlined with each subsequent iteration and I think it's going to eventually kill the series, a victim of big budget Triple-A game success. That's not to mention the "games as a service" trend, especially in big open-world games. There is no way Bethesda can make an Elder Scrolls 6 without microtransactions, a multiplayer option that focuses on even more revenue-generating features. I hope I'm wrong. However it turns out, I just don't think we're going to get anything that resembles the franchises RPG roots. I really think it's all part of the loss of the "middle market".

 

[Trell]

I like Skyrim and I would very much appreciate a new instalment of that series, that said, I love Nethack!

 

[RedCharles]

The corporate goons on Wall Street never paid gaming no mind until the success of GTA. World of Warcrack impressed those lowlifes too. And they've been muscling in for the last decade.

And it's the international market too, lowest common denominator. 31 flavors of vanilla. China's market is ruining movies, and to some extent video games.

The Anxiety of Influence is killing games, music and movies; reboots are reductive, and cannot be otherwise.

Have all the good stories been told? Has the well dried up? Has yesterday's success set the bar too high?

Honestly, I'm most interested VietDoom right now. And some of the Russian/Polish games coming out.

I played Rage 2 for 30 minutes and returned it. Yeesh, it felt like doing chores rather than playing a game. Been there done that. No fun. RPG elements have been ruining shooters for the last decade.

Elder scrolls six is too far away to get hyped about. I'm looking forward to it. I was just playing Skryim about an hour ago. Todd Howard will do a good job. Skyrim together was fun, but too buggy. Lan type multiplayer will be good for the Elder Scrolls. Hopefully the continuing failure of Fallout 76 will prevent the MMO model from being used again. Hopefully we'll get Atmos sound too. I don't care too much about micro transactions for skins, but pay to win is evil. It's weird that they haven't just done an episodic model. Smaller expansions and quest lines would be good for everyone. Hopefully they continue to allow and support modding.

Or the corporate scum will take over and ruin another part of American life.

 

[Wayde Robson]

The corporate goons on Wall Street never paid gaming no mind until the success of GTA. World of Warcrack impressed those lowlifes too. And they've been muscling in for the last decade.

And it's the international market too, lowest common denominator. 31 flavors of vanilla. China's market is ruining movies, and to some extent video games.

So, about the time of the of success of GTA III, and WoW is when the big finance industries starting investing in gaming? That sounds about right. GTA IV was a huge event-game. I remember those, places like GameStop had big midnight game-selling events for different titles. I don't think that happens anymore because of digital downloading.

Fortunately, "games as a service", specifically where the game itself is a persistent environment the company can keep adding to and scoring sales, turned out not to be the ruin of games as many of us thought in about 2017. Funny how fast that changed. Fallout 76 has been a dud, but at the same time, GTA Online has been a pretty successful example of GaaS, so... it's there are no simple laws or dire predictions. Good games will still come out.

I hadn't thought about China affecting games the way it affects movies. A lot of garbage movies get made for the international market. It makes sense games would follow. I wonder if that has anything to do with Blizzard's involvement in the China market, I heard about that controversy about Bliz and China, some well-known competitive gamer got squelched by Blizzard because he said something bad about serving China or something like that. I didn't pay much attention because I don't care for WoW, but I did play the original Warcraft, I loved ... I think it was Warcraft3 with the Frozen Throne expansion that introduced heroes. That was a cool game. I also played quite a bit of Starcraft 2, but never got out of the Bronze league except for a couple of time I'd touch Silver for a bit then start losing. I never really dug into that game very far. My son plays that one now, he's much better than I ever was. He used to watch me play it when he was too young to be very good at it, but he did get good eventually.

I've been playing a LOT of a game called Conan Exiles, mainly creating a clan of two with a friend, but honestly, that game in PvP is too much of a time commitment for long-term play. If you're not totally dedicated to being on every night in PvP your base is going to be toast after you logon after a multi-day absence. But after awhile PvE games get kind of boring because there's no stress once you get to a certain level and the environment just isn't as much of a threat anymore.

I've taken a break from CE so I can finally finish Red Dead Redemption 2. That's a great game but it saddens me that there will never be DLC for the single player mode. They're more focused on further development only for RDR2 Online.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

I just look for few years old hits and buy them on sale. Finished GTA5 a few days ago [story mode and most of the hidden or less obvious things not attended to]. Bought yesterday Divinity Original Sin Enhanced Edition. A few hours of play and I like it so far. Controls will take a bit to get used to, but very nice (pretty and smooth) play at 1440p and 120hz.

As for Elder Scrolls 6. Yes, Skyrim was a massive hit (still is). Yes, it had some rather big bugs. Elder Scrolls 6 is still far away to have any serious discussion about it (so little is known so far). I will just say that they have a tough task ahead as they can't release this game worse than Skyrim was.

 

[Wayde Robson]

I just look for few years old hits and buy them on sale.

I'm kind of in the same boat. I guess I'm a "mature" gamer now, for sure. When I hear about a game that I'm interested in, like Kingdom Come: Deliverance, I'm willing to wait a year or so. It lets them work out the bugs and chances are I'm able to get it at a discount.

 

[Pogre]

I played Skyrim absolutely to death. I got so obsessed with upgrading and went nuts on it. My character was so op. I was killing dragons with 1 arrow!

It's the only Elder Scrolls game I've played tho. I tried to get into Oblivion (got the GOTY edition used, with all DLC for $15 at Gamestop) and just wasn't feeling it for some reason. I dunno. Skyrim hooked me right away. Are they that much different in the way they play and feel? They seemed like different games to me, but to be fair I never made it very far in Oblivion.


As far as Skyrim goes tho, I'm a grizzled vet but it's the only Elder Scrolls I'm familiar with.

 

[Wayde Robson]

I played Skyrim absolutely to death. I got so obsessed with upgrading and went nuts on it. My character was so op. I was killing dragons with 1 arrow!

It's the only Elder Scrolls game I've played tho. I tried to get into Oblivion (got the GOTY edition used, with all DLC for $15 at Gamestop) and just wasn't feeling it for some reason. I dunno. Skyrim hooked me right away. Are they that much different in the way they play and feel? They seemed like different games to me, but to be fair I never made it very far in Oblivion.


As far as Skyrim goes tho, I'm a grizzled vet but it's the only Elder Scrolls I'm familiar with.

If Skyrim was your first, any previous would be tough to get into. They certainly did something amazing with Skyrim. Just taking in the view from any mountaintop, I can still do it today if I fire it up, make a new character, endure that execution scene and get out of that initial dungeon.