Summary
Way before it was ready for release,Starfieldwas already the talk of the town in various ways, such as it being Bethesda’s first new IP in a long time or how it was supposed to deliver what many fans expected from Xbox after a shallow few years of first-party releases, andThe Elder Scrolls 6will likely go through something similar when the time is right. While they are very different games,The Elder Scrolls 6andStarfieldwill probably share a lot of DNAgiven that they are both Bethesda RPGs with a penchant for exploration and immersive storytelling. However, if there is something thatStarfield’s issues highlight, is thatTES 6shouldn’t have the same ambition.
Shooting for the stars seemed like the obvious play forStarfield, as it didn’t have the same level of anticipation as other longstanding Bethesda series to back it, but it didn’t pay back as much as its developer would have liked. An enormous gaming effort to make and to fully explore,Starfieldtried to be true to its title by including over a thousand planets and ten times as many options for players to build their characters or ships.Starfieldis and was conceived as a game of ambition, but that is not whatThe Elder Scrolls 6needs - not on the same level as Bethesda’s new space exploration IP.
The Elder Scrolls 6 Should Prioritize Hand-Crafted Content, Smaller Scale
Why TES 6 Can’t Afford to be Like Starfield
The Elder Scrolls 6suffers from one big issue, and that is to beSkyrim’s sequel. This can be a problem becauseSkyrimwas one of the most successful games ever made, with a plethora of different ports and editions as well as near-endless community mods, and it is still being played today, after over 12 years.TES 6runs the risk of looking at that kind of success and trying to go above and beyond, butStarfieldshowed that this is not always the best choice.
Starfield’s 1,000+ planetscan be seen as a boon at first glance, but they were mostly empty and simply not engaging or rewarding, which is a huge downside for a game based on exploration. In this type of game, exploration should be given the appropriate weight when it comes to players' decision-making, in the sense that allowing gamers to freely take any path they wish within the game should always give their session meaning - be it loot at the end of a dungeon, a secret quest found toward the edges of the map, or something of the sort. This is more important than ever afterStarfield’s reviews plummeted on Steam, and Bethesda needs a big win.
The Elder Scrolls 6 should be an ambitious title, but Bethesda shouldn’t mistake quantity for quality. If Starfield had one-fourth of its planets but each of them was rich and unique, then it would have been a lot more impactful than it was - and this is a big lesson for TES 6 to learn.
The Elder Scrolls 6 Should be Smaller to Deliver on Every Front
The Elder Scrolls 6’s release may be years away, with it likely being closer to 2030 than fans would like, but this doesn’t mean it can’t use that time to evolve the Bethesda formula. IfTES 6has the same open-world setting asStarfield, then it shouldn’t be adding procedurally-generated dungeons or expanding beyond its titular region (or regions), but rather it should stick to a smaller scope.TES 6should be a hand-crafted experience through and through, and that would make for the best possible approach from Bethesda after theStarfielddebacle so that Xbox can regain players' trust.
In a similar fashion,Avowedis reportedly smaller thanSkyrim, and that is not necessarily a bad thing. Even ifThe Elder Scrolls 6ends up being on the smaller end, it could still flourish with tons of in-game activities and content to explore. A small map is not a death sentence in the gaming industry, especially in a lore-rich franchise likeThe Elder Scrolls, where the region can expand underground as much as the skies.TES 6can’t afford the risk of not delivering on fans' expectations, and for that reason, it’s much safer to stick to a smaller-scale project.
