Saturday, April 11, 2020

The casualization of a franchise; my concern for The Elder Scrolls VI

Let me preface this by saying that I know this topic has been done to death, and that not everyone shares my opinion (which is fine, disagreements make the world go-round) but I wanted to get my 2 cents in while we're in a friendly subreddit where we don't have to worry about a gatekeeping hivemind trying to shut us down.

I realize that every game that Bethesda (and by extension every game developer) releases, is in experiment. Skyrim was an experiment that proved to be hugely successful, dare I say it is the most successful Elder Scrolls game in history.

Now Skyrim is a good game, it introduced to us some new elements, rehashed older ones, and was an all-round fun experience. With mods you could even transform it into a completely different game. Now with that being said, is it a good 'Elder Scrolls game'? In my opinion, and in may others' opinions, no. Skyrim as an experiment was catering to the casual playerbase (at the time COD, Candy Crush, etc) - basically people who were not seriously vested in video games, only played them once, played mobile games when were bored at work, etc.

But Skyrim the experiment proved to be so successful and so addictive that it's hard to draw a line between saying "this is a game for the casual gamer" and "this is a good RPG", the thing is that Skyrim seems to be both, at least in regards to its approach-ability in that players from every known franchise have played Skyrim at least once, and the console players who missed out on the opportunity to play with mods jumped at the chance to try it for the first time on XBOX, Bethesda knows this, they have the receipts to prove it.

So basically we went from Arena/Daggerfall - very oldschool, Bard's Tale-esque 1990's D&D player's dream to Morrowind (which at the time was divisive among Daggerfall fans) to Oblivion - a mix if I may say, between Morrowind and Fable (and imo the game with most balance between good RPG & gameplay elements that cater to everyone) to now Skyrim; a legendary beast of mythic proportions so ridiculously streamlined, yet so ridiculously successful.

Like I said, Skyrim IS a good and fun game, it has its flaws as all ES games do - but it is still a VERY different animal compared to the past TES games. Now I expect people to chime in with "but every ES game has been different from the other!" and you're right! Oblivion had (in many an opinion) improved combat and map system, Morrowind had an all-around better guild and quest system than Daggerfall, and Daggerfall...(I'm not sure how different Daggerfall was from Arena so we're skipping them). Now you may be wondering why I'm so worried for TES VI, I'm not worried that it'll be a bad GAME, because as others have said TES is Bethesda's baby, its cash-cow they won't mess it up or seriously go too far with it unlike Fallout. I am however worried that it won't be a good ELDER SCROLLS game, the difference being that it retains the feel and options and experiences of past TES games (those options seemingly minimizing by Oblivion and completely vanishing by Skyrim).

I'm not talking about Todd Howard Molyneuxing about skyrim having "1000 endings" Things like leveling up, journal/record keeping, questing, etc. were all heavily (for lack of a better word) "dumbed down" by 2006, and were streamlined into 1-click after thoughts by 2011. In Daggerfall, people could spend up to an hour or more customizing their class, which you know - determined their play style and how the flow of the game would go more or less. In Morrowind people would spend hours on quests, irritated sure, but many would come to be appreciative of the experience (myself included, I hated the no fast-travel at the time but grew used to Vvardenfell's way of life, being a Roman in Rome as they say). Oblivion - again I reiterate the idea that Oblivion brought gameplay equality to the Elder Scrolls; perks, leveling, journal, questing, etc. were all more or less taken directly from Morrowind and just revamped a bit - everything else of course could have used some TLC.

And again Skyrim, a controversial cash cow of a game, and Bethesda's pride and joy (I say Skyrim is Beth's pride & joy because it has outsold every other TES game in the catalogue), so insanely popular that many gamers asked when a "Skyrim 2" would be released (either casual gamers who don't understand how sequels in the TES franchise works or are just inferring TES VI).
Skyrim is divisive among TES fans, mainly between Skyrim and Morrowind fans for many reasons. I'm not worried that TES VI will become a Skyrim 2.0, I know it won't because the devs will be catering to the current loudest majority of gamers (twitter, facebook games, gacha players, casual gamers who play one time and quit) but will season the game with enough nostalgia and lore to hopefully lure old school fans and the 1% of TES gamers who started with Oblivion or who are neutral on the franchise's current standing.

What is my worry then? My worry is that with Bethesda obviously catering to the twitter, instagram, etc. crowd, they will be once again streamlining options and features to make the game more appealing to said demographic. I'm going to be brutally honest, the majority of people who live on the twitter app - are always on the go, and don't have time to sit down and emotionally and intellectually invest themselves into a video game, it is just not their modus operandi. These casual gamers will play the game once to completion, post a review of it either being "1/5 = a dumpster fire or 5/5 = amazing best game ever made!" Are some of these people hard core Elder Scrolls fans? Of course, I bet lots of people who follow Bethesda on Twitter and tweet/retweet Oblivion memes are old school fans of the franchise, the issue is that the vocal majority is screaming "less is more, so let's take out more stuff!" (i.e. the completely watered down perk/leveling system in Fallout 4).
Maybe that's just the sign of the times, that things change and people either adapt or drop it, but I really fear that the TES VI game that Bethesda delivers to us will be extremely shallow. The "games as a service" model and the constant attempts at monetizing mods, and streamlining/watering down content (press 'A' to level up, follow the pointer to get the magic lamp) is going to create a less old school fan friendly and more general/casual one-time player friendly.

I think TES games can and do appeal to everybody to an extent, I don't necessarily believe that you NEED to remove longstanding traditions and gameplay elements in order to be inclusive to everybody. I still feel that regardless it WILL be a great game, just that whether it's a great Elder Scrolls game greatly depends on Bethesda, and whether or not they decide to leave in or take more features out.

Basically, long story short, tl;dr - I fear this game is going to be as or more watered down than Skyrim, but will still be a good game nonetheless but not necessarily a good TES game.