Skyrim is shit btw. Oblivion forever (oblivion is worse than Morrowind, but Oblivion was my entrance to the games so I love it)
Bethesda certainly have a lot to contend with in the Fromsoft era of realtime combat and the BG3 era of RPG.
I expect them to produce Starfield with an Elder Scrolls reskin for the next game but with some AI npc interactions. The first 2 months will be everyone defending it followed by the realisation that it's dogshit just like Starfield.
ES6 being complete dogshit is the free space on my 2032 bingo card
2032? Mighty optimistic are we?
Did it even take two months for people to come around to starfield being shit? Felt more like a week or two at the most.
There was definitely a small crowd who were immediately negative but it took the people who paid for it a while to accept
Bethesda hasn't put out anything above average since Oblivion
Oblivion was overall not good, but it had some moments, mostly involving Shivering Isles
But Oblivion was basically them rejecting everything that made Morrowind such a classic
No unique setting (Cyrodiil was supposed to be fairly Mediterranean if I recall correctly), weak villain and plot (boy, it would be great if I actually did something other than escort Sean Bean to his death) and it was the beginning of them paring down all the crunch that makes RPGs fun
No unique setting (Cyrodiil was supposed to be fairly Mediterranean if I recall correctly), w
The empire was meant to be the collision between Roman (Colovian) and Aztec (Nibenay) culture. Roman centurions with face tattoos and feather capes. Mediterranean on the coast. Jungle inland etc.
I just loved exploring in Oblivion. There was something really wonderful about stumbling around in the woods, finding some village and figuring out what its Deal was. I still remember my first playthrough where I ended up ass-first in that painting quest. There were so many of those experiences. I can acknowledge Morrowind is the Better Game, but the nostalgia just doesn't hit the same.
Did not get the same thing with Skyrim. It felt so formulaic.
Skyrim feels like the perfect RPG for the "Epic Bacon" crowd
Every character can do everything, you routinely piss off every other Daedric Lord, and you have the whole Romans Vs. Vikings Vs. Dragons thing
There are little moments that feel alright, like they're building up to something good, but immediately undercut themselves
Like the whole Parthunaax Dilemma, where the Blades are like "We won't help you fight the actual big bad until you kill the one dragon who doesn't kill for fun" and you can just ignore it. There's no punishment for not doing it and no real benefit to doing it, it's the epitome of their design.
Just a big and wide with zero depth
I will admit that Oblivion was mostly my introduction to Elder Scrolls, so there is some nostalgia bias. But I feel like Oblivion was overall good and is a medium between Morrowind and Skyrim, and has some strengths of both, and I am an Oblivion defender.
There are some upsides and years ago I would have said Oblivion is better because of how slow and obtuse some of the Morrowind mechanics are if you are new to it. Especially if you just couldn't look up solutions to things on the internet (I keenly remember many hours of wasted searching just because an NPC gave wrong directions to the dungeon). These days I do think Morrowind is better because of the world building and the depth involved. It is the only one I am still replaying occasionally.
Oblivion had a lot of streamlining of the mechanics that made it a lot easier to get into the game and got rid of a lot of the drag of the games and some non-level parts of the grind. But as bad as the Oblivion main quest could get, I still remember how much of the main quest in Morrowind was getting a book for Caius Cossades and that being the impetus for me mostly ignoring Elder Scrolls main quests and just wander and dungeon delve. And even though a lot of things were getting simplified and flattened for this, Oblivion still wasn't anywhere near Skyrim's levels yet. And even if the main quest was boring, several of the side quests before Shivering Isles were good. I still think that the Dark Brotherhood questline was one of the best Bethesda questlines and even the Mages Guild setup of getting approval from every hall, which each specializes in a different school of magic, was a good choice of requiring the character to have some amount of proficiency with magic without a direct stat requirement (yes, you could just buy scrolls and staves to do everything if you were high enough level, but it is better than Skyrim's where a barbarian with a small handful of scrolls could be archmage in a week). Even though the "every hall specializes in one school of magic" conceit just reeks of a bad GM's world building, Oblivion does pull it off.
So I think that Oblivion was actually quite good, even if it wasn't at Morrowind's level. And it did introduce a lot of mechanics that were a wrong turn made more obvious after Skyrim (e.g. unkillable NPCs instead of the "persist in this doomed world" message, the entire world levels with you and gives good loot no mater the quest or area).
I agree with some of your points, except the Dark Brotherhood quest
The individual missions are good, each one showcasing different aspects of a good assassin
But the actual quest is not that good when you consider that it's very obvious that both the player and their character realizes that they're being mislead but are given no recourse to do anything about it. You can't warn Armand or track down the perpetrator until after you slaughter all these fellow assassins or anything
Yes, yes, I know that there's the whole thing with Sithis and the Dark Mother and how they just love killing no matter what, but by all accounts, it's just railroading for the sake of railroading and it leaves a bad taste in my mouth
Skyrim is great at a lot of things, being a good RPG is not one of them.
I hear it's good at being a porn mod. I tried downloading one when I was about 17 though and it just kind of looked flat and unpassionate, so Not For Me.
Legends say that it is only with the widespread falsehood of "Fallout 2 > Fallout 1" that will harken ashinadash's return.
Skyrim would have been a great game, if it was built on the principles of socialism, which is sort of was with the mod community, unfortunately it was built on the principles of liberalism using the wealth and experience acquired from the previous projects.
Once you get to this point in life you only have two choices, no matter what you're doing, are you willing to invest the money back into human beings? They tried to do something with mods irrc so why not invest capital into establishing a school for devs? Literally could have ended up having the most interesting looking, polished, well run, videogame ever made.
Instead we get this lovable half-assed broken mess carried by both money thrown at advertising campaigns and the mod scene. Yet another example of how short sighted libs are, all the awesome stuff people manage to build is an exception that proves it. All that effort displayed by wondering adventurers would get multiplied if they worked together. I mean what was that Baldurs Gate sort of shows it. Now imagine if a Game company had 1.000-10.000 workers in-house, guaranteed employment, 8 hours of sleep a night, lunch breaks, shared goal, instead of what they have had.
Although gamers don't deserve it, so scratch that. The developers do tho'
Once you get to this point in life you only have two choices, no matter what you’re doing, are you willing to invest the money back into human beings? They tried to do something with mods irrc so why not invest capital into establishing a school for devs? Literally could have ended up having the most interesting looking, polished, well run, videogame ever made.
Wouldve been the biggest PR move ever too but the capitalist worldview made them see the modding community as their enemies lol
forever missing ash and her posts 
We've lost so many posters over the years. Like tears in the rain.
yeaa, she was great 
we have lost entirely too many wonderful people throughout the years
i just hope they're only gone from here and not...more generally 
Yeah.
I often wonder which of the hexbears whose posting I loved but who disappeared, actually only changed names and maybe posted less frequently, which of them simply moved on from the site, and which of them had irl events (either good or bad) that superseded their continued input here. It's especially noticeable when I read years old threads and see names (some of whom I might have forgotten about otherwise) that hit me with a rush of nostalgia and think "damn, they were such an awesome poster! I wonder what ever happened to them..."
I always wonder what happened to Kirkbride. All the stuff he did for Morrowind was so far out there and then he just sort of fell off the face of the earth. He's just been doing managerial positions in game dev ever since. My favourite is the Knights of Pelinal stuff for oblivion. The image of a time travelling cyborg medieval knight stepping out the dense jungle with his Minotaur nephew before a bunch of tribal Cyrodillians is probably the only thing that has stuck with me from Oblivion.
He works as an external consultant for Bethesda every now and then. He's been involved in pretty much every game although with less degree.
Much less degree. C0DA and its various related writings are the sort of things that should have been included in the game (ESO doesn't count, death to MMOs). Bethesdas race to the most marketable game possible isnt suprising its just that Kirkbride hasn't established himself like say Chris Avellone (an extremely overrated writer IMO) as a recognisable RPG writer. Instead he's spent most of his time working at TellTale, which I always kind of thought was a waste.
the best scrolls game is the one you played in your teens because it was fresh enough and you were young enough that your imagination and the novelty filled in all the gaps for you
for me and my peeps it was morrowind because we are all in our 40s but most of us arent online as much anymore and the next generation of young people's voices are more prominent online so now its oblivion and one day you'll be beat down with life and half the people you know will have died or be super busy and people will be saying skyrim is best
mark my words
Roleplaying in Skyrim is a skill issue
My favorite Skyrim RPG build is that of the ambitious Vampire Hunter, the victim of vampire nobles who killed his family; he swore eternal vengeance against all rich vamps
He crosses the border to join the Dawnguard before the main quest sidelines him. In his eyes every quest is simply an opportunity to acquire another weapon to destroy his vampiric enemies
He joins the Companions to improve his combat skills and jumps at the chance to become a Werewolf for obvious reasons
He travels to Winterhold College to learn spells that counter the art of Lifedrain
He searches for Words of Power because "If it can bring down Dragons, it can bring down Vampires"
At his lowest moment he forsakes his ideals and seeks the aid of the Daedric Princes, acquiring dark weapons and darker powers
But then, He stumbles upon the mysteries of the Dwemer and impressed by the mechanical power on display, he realizes it's not demonic magic he needs, but Knowledge, he learns everything there is to know about Dwemer technology, gets himself some poisoned exploding Dwemer bolts and a Dwemer Crossbow and becomes the stealth archer he was born to be
I've found that Skyrim is good for roleplaying if you only use diagetic fast travel (wagons, boats) and you pretend you have no idea where any of the particular quests and items are.
Walking town to town collecting odd jobs, sleeping in inns by the road and collecting rumours as an adventurer is neat.
To be entirely fair, you can do this kind of roleplaying in any video game. You don't have to be Gordon Freeman in Half-Life 2. You could be a civilian imposter that just looks like him.
Roleplaying in RPGs should intersect with the mechanics of the game, usually limiting you via stats and gameplay options. Your vampire hunter is dedicated to weapons so they're less charismatic, or whatever. That creates interesting gameplay scenarios, connects you to your character more and encourages you to replay the game to experience what you traded off in one playthrough. It's about limits as much as it is about choice.
Since Skyrim, Bethesda has started to lean into 'infinite leveling,' which means every character will eventually become the same ultra-competent bandit slayer. They also very rarely restrict content depending on your characters choices.
I had a blast doing a playthrough as Rincewind from Discworld.
Skyrim seems like the kind of place he would turn up.
Im old enough to remember having the same opinion but of oblivion comparing it to morrowind. Somehow Bethesda keeps falling forward.
Skyrim has terrible combat and I think that is part of why people like it.
oblivion is shit morrowind forever 
morrowind is shit daggerfall forever daggerfall is shit arena forever
spoiler
actually i've never met an Arena defender
Isn't more like
Skyrim is shit, oblivion forever Oblivion is just fine, morrowind forever Morrowind is good, not great, daggerfall forever WHAT? WHAT ARE YOU KIDS TALKING ABOUT? 
I have hated every bethesda game that I ever played except for call of cthulu which I didn't finish because it was riddled with bugs.
the only political compass you need (no i won't tell you what x and y represent) 
Lmao in the blurred picture it looked like it was beavis & butthead
Skyrim is like single player pokemon its good cuz its the first rpg many people play.
Shitrim
But Oblivious was way worse. Got my Dark Elves looking like Jolly Green Giant like wtf.
Wasn't it an early 2010s or late 00s game? Sandbox games were very rare at that time.
I liked Witcher 3 & Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 which are leagues better.
Banned? DM Wmill to appeal.
No anti-nautilism posts. See: Eco-fascism Primer
Slop posts go in c/slop. Don't post low-hanging fruit here.