The Elder Scrolls 1990's: The Beginning
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| Screenshot from Moby Games |
Honestly I do not know that much about Arena from a game play perspective other than that it is the predecessor to the still hugely popular or infamous (depending on who you ask) Daggerfall. I know the lore and plot surrounding the game, however aside from that it is more or less like its successor in that it is a medieval role playing game with huge emphasis placed on character & class development, and role or backstory.
Daggerfall would continue this trend two years later in 1996, though its initial launch would be met with much ire from the player base due to a buggy mechanics, bugged quests, and just an overall bugged experience that could actually prevent one from completing the game.
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| Screenshot from Abandonware |
Released in 1996 for MS-DOS computers, The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall boasted a massive worldmap supposedly spanning "the size of Great Britain," or approximately 209,331 square kilometers. Built using the XnGine engine, Daggerfall was one of the first fully 3D-rendered games, an impressive feat of its times. However, as mentioned earlier a buggy launch would leave much of the TES fanbase angry at having paid $50 for a game that doesn't work and disgruntled at best.
A patch was released by Bethesda that fixed most of the more serious bugs , and most of the game-breaking bugs that would render the main quest unwinnable. Occasional bugs could still occur and ruin quests and potentially break the game, though a fan patch released by the Daggerfall community would fix most if not all of these.
Daggerfall's detailed character and class creation formed a trend that would continue for the next two Elder Scrolls games, albeit slightly streamlined.
Daggerfall received a huge update recently with the new Unity Project having been completed and ready for download. Unity itself is more or less a remaster of classic Daggerfall, having updated textures, graphics, lighting and sound making the game more appealing to a 2020's gamer.
The Elder Scrolls 2000's: The Middle
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| Screenshot from Mobygames |
Morrowind took what Daggerfall was doing and upgraded it to full 3D, rather than just placing lenticular 2D sprites that move as you move. The improvements are vast and many; the weather and environment changes are more realistic such as rain, wind, snow, day and night effects.
Combat was tweaked significantly, whether it is considered an improvement at this time is up for debate. Many returning players already criticized the game for "dumbing" down the franchise, and that Daggerfall's combat while difficult at first was easier to learn, while Morrowind's is pure D&D roll-based, though improvements in certain attributes could remedy this.
Speaking of dumbing of down, the detailed character creation from the days of Arena and Daggerfall returns in Morrowind just not quite as in depth as before. You can answer a series of questions and have a class randomly assigned to you based on your answers, your can choose from a set of premade classes or you can customize your own class. What is missing from this schema were the negative and positive attributes or "pros and cons", such as making your character phobic of spiders or undead but being resistant to magic.
NPC interactions of course return in Morrowind, along with a long list of premade topics such as "Solstheim", "Dark Elves", and "Tribunal Temple" pretty like how it was back in Daggerfall. Disposition works in Morrowind more or less like it did in Daggerfall, certain guilds, races, and classes will have an impact regarding certain NPC relations. You could bribe people with gold, which is the fastest and easiest way to get their disposition up.
Morrowind is also a first for Elder Scrolls to introduce "DLC" to the series with the Tribunal and Bloodmoon Expansions, that expanded the world of Morrowind and prolonged the adventures of the Nerevarine.
One feature that was used prominently was fast-traveling, Morrowind replaced the map-based fast-travel system with a series of different traveling mechanics ranging from local Silt Striders, to Mark & Recall spells. With overall improved graphics, Jeremy Soule as composer and an ironclad plot it's easy to see why Morrowind is considered to be one of, if not the best Elder Scrolls games in the franchise and is more or less universally beloved.
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| Screenshot from Steam/Mobygames |
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, released in March 2006 on PC and Sony & Xbox consoles brought players a return to a fully 3D Elder Scrolls world. Like its predecessor Morrowind, Oblivion boasted a large fleshed out world, with improved graphics such as lighting, fire/water effects, day & night, etc. Improved sound and an impressive soundtrack with the returning Jeremy Soule, and a combat system that is an actual agreed upon improvement.
Oblivion might be known more now for it's less than stellar character generations (Oblivion Character Overhaul for PC!), that acts more or less as a meme template (ala "NPC dialogue") but its contributions to the Elder Scrolls series and its place as its own unique fantasy RPG experience should not be overlooked.
Oblivion brought about a return of horses, which were absent in the horse-less alien world of Vvardenfell (TES III: Morrowind). Oblivion also made its own tweaks to the ever changing character creation system, though most additions introduced in Morrowind were left unchanged such as the ability to choose a birth sign, which was absent in both Arena & Daggerfall and is replaced by the Standing Stones in Skyrim for some reason.
One of things many players loved about Oblivion was its rustic User Interface, which was a huge improvement from Morrowind's bland straight black screen with gold-yellow borders. Each time you interacted with the menu, it really felt like your were reading through your journal and only added to players' immersion.
Fast Travel also returned in Oblivion via it's paper-looking world map (which could be made more beautiful looking using mods on PC). And the devs were even nice enough to allow you to immediately fast travel to any of the major cities from the start. One could argue that the decision to make these immediately visible by default as laziness on the devs part, however the argument could be made that the devs were appeasing the fans who wanted traditional fast travel back.
Oblivion is by no means a perfect game, it suffers from the same streamlining as its predecessor in Morrowind and even levitation was removed because of some bizarre meta reasons (though handwaved as being "officially banned" in Cyrodiil, though doesn't explain why its still absent in Skyrim).
The traditional dialogue system from Morrowind returns, though more streamlined and tweaked to fit the "here and now" relevancy of the topics of the game (such as "Prophet", "Grey Fox", "Emperor's Assassination"). Lots of lore topics that were present in Morrowind were removed, likely because Oblivion being a fully voiced game, would require more time and of course more money to individually record each line of dialogue and Oblivion's dialogue was already clunky to begin with:
Like its predecessor, Oblivion also came packed with DLC in the form of microtransactions such as the infamous "Horse Armor", "Spell Tomes", and various player homes for your character depending on your moral or faction alignment. It also introduced us to the Shivering Isles, Sheogorath's daedric plane of oblivion and arguably one of the best Elder Scrolls DLCs.
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| Horse Armor only $5.99! |
Traversing the wilderness of Cyrodiil, with the sunlight gleaming off your Imperial Dragon Armor, the beautiful fields of wheat dancing in the breeze while "Through the Valleys" plays accompanying...all of these things coupled makes questing in TES IV: Oblivion a remarkable experience (ok I am a bit biased), and it truly makes Oblivion a standout game.
The Elder Scrolls 2010's: Now and Beyond
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| Screenshot from Mobygames |
Ah Skyrim, where do I begin? Many believe that Skyrim is the worst of the series, the most obvious offender being the removal of the traditional class and birth sign system from the previous Elder Scrolls games. The once heavily detailed character customization system from Daggerfall was streamlined to a very basic perk tree, no more agonizing over which attributes to place where, no the game will do that for you and all you need to worry about is pressing Y to choose whether you want to increase health, magicka or stamina and then allocate 1 perk point.
The NPC dialogue system from the past two games is missing, and in its place is a very basic interaction menu of asking about topics relevant to specific NPCs (such as Lucan Valerius's Gold Claw) or asking Arngeir about Paarthurnax and the Greybeards over and over.
Levitation is once again missing, what's more the entire Mysticism branch has been abolished for reasons beyond me (presumably something to do with mountains or engine limitations)
Horses returning with mounted combat was a nice bonus (added in Update 1.6), something I wish had been in Oblivion and makes the game play more fun and intuitive and makes Skyrim stand out a bit more from the rest.
Combat like from Oblivion is a big improvement (save for the psychic ninja dodging all enemies seem to possess), which is one of the things universally agreed upon. The addition of a sprint button was a godsend, and very helpful when outrunning annoying enemies (I'm looking at you wolves), as well as implementing it for horses.
Graphics of course are a big improvement from the previous Elder Scrolls games, though I dare say that Oblivion's graphics were nicer or "prettier" to look at, and Skyrim while breathtaking at times, is usually bleak and gray most of the time (though with more information regarding ESO: Greymoor having come out, the bleak look is undoubtedly intentional).
The physics engine is still bugged much like it was in Oblivion, where you can enter a previously unentered room or building and see plates, cups, cutlery, and food go flying across the room as if a bomb went off.
There are of course recurring bugs, I don't mean the same bugs carried over from Oblivion, but similar quest bugs that can occur on any new game or character. One example being discovering Leifnarr's corpse in Broken Helm Hollow, and being unable to initiate the miscellaneous quest from his wife at Heartwood Mill to find him or discovering any of the stolen/missing Bard's College Instruments (such as "Finn's Lute" from Stony Creek Cave) before joining and talking to said professors, and being unable to return them and having instruments forever stuck in your inventory. This particularly problematic for players as exploration is one of the main attractions of Elder Scrolls games, and bugs like these have most likely made explorers less adventurous for fear of bugging a uninitiated quest.
Skyrim reintroduced DLC like its predecessors, though unlike Oblivion - having had released an onslaught of microtransactions, Skyrim released a humble 3 whole DLC, seemingly having learned from the last time.
But wait there's more! In 2016 Skyrim was re-released for PC and XBOX One & Playstation 4 consoles, WITH the inclusion of community-created mods hosted via Bethesda's lackluster server, of course with the caveat of paid mods via the much ridiculed "Creation Club".
Like Oblivion, Skyrim itself has become a meme at this point, the ever-present joke being "I can't wait for Skyrim 2 or Skyrim Ultimate Very Special Platinum Edition!" or Skyrim for Toaster Ovens! Really this is the fandom coming together and making fun of the many Skyrim re-releases, though honestly if all collected releases are accounted for there are only 4 standout re-releases; The Original Skyrim, The Legendary Edition, The Special Edition and Skyrim VR (if the latter even counts). Mostly it's just longtime and new players impatiently grumbling for a new TES game, specifically The Elder Scrolls VI.
And...Onward
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| Official Bethesda teaser |
This practice is known as gate-keeping, and the fans who are actively doing this to others among the community are part of the problem. These fans if they can even be considered that, are what I imagine to be Bethesda & Zenimax's ideal customer; they will buy whatever Bethesda puts out no questions asked, and when others in the community have an issue with the game it is their problem, not the developers.
Bethesda's track record as of late has left something to be desired. A botched Fallout 76 launch scandalized the Fallout community, largely those who had purchased the Collector's edition and expecting everything that was pictured in the description; an actual canvas bag (the bags were not shipped at launch and were not even made of canvas), among other grievances all of which were waived with an offer of five whole dollars in-game currency. Then there's Fallout 1st which is a whole other can of worms...
So where am I going with all of this? The question that has been framed in the title of this very article, but has yet to be asked? Should we be worried? Well...kind of, yes. Granted Bethesda hasn't been doing so well in regards to customer service lately, but they haven't released any complete garbage games (I'll withhold comment on Blades & 76 because I haven't played them - and the main controversy has been lootboxes and the Fallout 1st/launch debacle).
It's been almost twenty years since Morrowind's release, I think it's safe to assume that some things will be changed/removed to fit Bethesda's vision of an ideal modern game. The UI will most likely be changed again (hopefully to something less black and bland), the attribute/leveling system will be changed (hopefully to a more traditional one, though not likely if judging by Fallout 4's level/perk system).
My main concern with how Bethesda is handling these games is the massive amount of streamlining which has been done in less than twenty years. In between Daggerfall and Fallout 4, the character attribute/level system has been so watered down that the game does all of the hard attribute allocating FOR you, and you merely need to press a button to allocate a perk. That's it. People complained when Skyrim added quest markers to the game, believing that it held your hand too much and removed any modicum of challenge from the game. Oblivion had quest markers in a sense, but in the form of revealing an unvisitable location on your map, which you would have to travel to on your own.
What's next for the Elder Scrolls? Perhaps TES VI will have an "auto fight" feature, or a TL;DR feature for impatient gamers who simply don't have time to sift through all of that pesky dialogue. Maybe the game will come with an auto play feature, wherein the game will play itself for you, so now you no longer have to worry about going on those long tedious expeditions in abandoned mines or caverns and can avoid that boring main quest altogether. Do I sound like I'm being sarcastic? Am I being sarcastic, who knows?!
Fetch quests will undoubtedly make a return, they're ever present in almost every modern Role Playing Game out there and they're not going away. The magic system can't get any worse unless Bethesda decides to remove Illusion and/or Alteration or streamline all of them into one magical item like what Lionhead did with Fable III.
Creation Club will most certainly be a thing in TES VI, in fact it just might be the ONLY thing. Bethesda's found a way to monetize mods (albeit unpopular), and their obvious lack of support/interest in maintaining the Skyrim Special Edition & Fallout 4 mod severs show that they really only want people using their own paid mods. A prime example being is whenever the mods section of Skyrim/Fallout 4 is downed, it will take ages for Bethesda Support to rectify it. Conversely, whenever the Creation Club, ESO, Blades, Legends or Fallout 76 severs go down - Bethesda Support has them fixed almost within the hour, and definitely within the same day.
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| Mods had been down for several days at this point |
Honestly, the amount of streamlining that Bethesda can do to this game is limitless and we probably shouldn't worry too much about the streamlining of features UNTIL we see more of the game proper, such as game play videos with a focus on NPC interactions, user interface, and leveling up. At that point we can vote with our wallets and choose not to buy into Bethesda's narcissistic bullshit anymore. For now, we should speculate about the land wherein TES VI will take place, the inhabitants, the plot, the factions, and the potential of mods (which always makes what Bethesda does actually work). Basically I'm urging people to be cautiously optimistic, don't set your heart on anything and definitely DON'T pre-order.
