The lead designer of The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim has discussed the difference in design philosophy between Bethesda games and Larian’s Baldur’s Gate 3.
It’s worth noting that this guy is talking not of old Bethesda but modern Bethesda. The writing team behind Morrowind and half of Oblivion absolutely cared about the details that only 1% of people might see. Morrowind especially is a world built around you exploring the world building. It’s not about levelling up (wowee I can miss the flying fuckheads 2% less now), it was about exploring the politics and cultures in the world.
At some point, Bethesda games became about the mechanical exploration, about going over there because that looks like it might be interesting, oh it’s just a cave with combat in it oh well maybe over there will be interesting.
Skyrim is a great game… for its time. Todd Howard is the blight on the games industry for putting so many resources toward so many Skyrim remasters/re-releases/money grabs. Even if he outsourced all that work, those are dev houses he could have spent their time helping Bethesda actually fill their huge open worlds and perhaps get the same feeling of “every decision actually matters” that Larion did.
It’s worth noting that this guy is talking not of old Bethesda but modern Bethesda. The writing team behind Morrowind and half of Oblivion absolutely cared about the details that only 1% of people might see. Morrowind especially is a world built around you exploring the world building. It’s not about levelling up (wowee I can miss the flying fuckheads 2% less now), it was about exploring the politics and cultures in the world.
At some point, Bethesda games became about the mechanical exploration, about going over there because that looks like it might be interesting, oh it’s just a cave with combat in it oh well maybe over there will be interesting.
Skyrim was a blight on the games industry.
Skyrim is a great game… for its time. Todd Howard is the blight on the games industry for putting so many resources toward so many Skyrim remasters/re-releases/money grabs. Even if he outsourced all that work, those are dev houses he could have spent their time helping Bethesda actually fill their huge open worlds and perhaps get the same feeling of “every decision actually matters” that Larion did.
Skyrim is great if you want to be a stealth archer.
Is there any other way to play?