It wasn't compelling enough for the people who loved Morrowind, so it doesn't make sense that they would completely ditch what made Morrowind so great and instead go the opposite route with Skyrim, by turning it into a simplified action-adventure that holds your hand, and has dragons and marriage and children, oh my!

Complexity has gone down. Simplicity has gone up. What does that mean? Expect the next TES game to have a narrator that actually dictates your every action, commenting on whether it was good or not, and leading you where to go the entire playthrough. Oh, but maybe it'll be that guy from Bastion. He had such a cool voice.

I'd have to disagree. First is the cost of product development. Paying double for an extra dev team to do parallel development is not cost effective. Particualry in a recession like this. The other alternative of cutting the dev team in 50% would destroy the quality of the game (and Bethesda's brand as one of the best single RPG companies on the market). Believe me when I say that you DON'T want to go the route Electronic Arts takes with slave driving their devs. EA has over a 10 year history of pushing out garbage titles every year, with EP follow ups every 0.5 years. Because it's all about the $$$$ for these folks. I'd rather wait the extra time and get a decent quality game I can get a guaranteed 150+ hours from.

What EA did to an RPG masterpiece like DA1, innovative Indie companies like Maxis and Bioware, and succesful franchises like the Need for Speed, Spore, and especially the Sims 3, is completely incomprehensible. And don't get me started on EA's completely non-existent customer service/tech support and QA department. Hell why even bother going to the expense to have these, when you can use your customers to beta test, debug and even mod your buggy games for free.....

Everytime I see a post about how Skyrim is unfinished or is greatly lacking in some way, I think of the abominations EA's drug deals its loyal customer base and have to shake my head. I don't think these TES fan base folks realize that we've had MORE THAN ONE PATCH in the 6 weeks since Skyrim came out in November! Where a company like EA puts out patches in time increments of YEARS. And those patches are guaranteed to break more than they fix--assuming if they fix any of the previous bugs the fan bases have complained about on the forums at all!

For this desecration, I pray daily to Boethela, Mehrunes Dagon, and Mephala that their CEO and executive management burns in Oblivion for all eternity....

Just because Bethesda is doing a better job than EA doesn't mean they're doing a good job. They're still relying heavily on the community to fix their games, which is completely absurd. We pay $60 for a complete game, not an engine and resources we have to fix and build upon.

No kidding... Bioware did some amazing stuff prior to EA totally sinking their teeth in; Neverwinter Nights, Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect - Dragon Age was the start of the rot; DA was meant to be NWN's successor, but they realised that having what amounted to a fully customisable free home-brew MMO (like NWN1 was) was a terrible buisness model for them; which is to say, they couldn't milk it like a cash cow. So they chopped out the multiplayer halfway through development...

And Spore... ye gahds. They dumbed that down beyond belief to make it kiddy friendly in contrast to it's early previews which was more like Sim-Universe. Not to mention it suffered a save-game bloat bomb that rendered your save files unplayable after 60-90 hours, a bug which they never addressed even though the modders identified the source of the bug after a few months (The automatic scenery generation would go out of control and keep creating new scenery props every time you visitted a planet, until eventually the buffer overflowed)

I'm afraid it's such a success, Bethesda's never looking back and sees nothing wrong with the direction all modern games are going.

I'd like to think that the next TES will be bigger, better, improve and give more for the time that it takes for another TES to roll out, I was soundly proven that my hopes where on deft ears, that the massive money makers Bethesda had named Oblivion and FO3 and we have much in Skyrim that...really isn't much of an Improvement imo. peeps go on about how they make new games and don't reuse anything but I fell they are just munching PR and not really looking at the game ;p

With our luck they just want a larger audience so theyre gonna be even more streamlinedumbeddown

TES you used to know is over. Say goodbye to your stats.

the phenomenal success of skyrim just means they will have more money to work with for hiring actors paying workers and such. what will truly be the deciding factor for the size of the next game will be the power of the new generation of consoles set to come out some time in 2013.

It was incredibly clear that spore would be extremely simplistic the moment they revealed it.

Instead of making a game that did one game style well, they instead tried to shove a ton of game styles into a single game. a 2d arcade style action game, a 3d action game, a RTS, a city building game, and a 4x space strategy game. There was no way they would achieve enough depth in any of those phases to make a great game.

Yes, them having money is a good thing for the development of TES: Elswyr.

That we have to wait 5 more years for another tes game!

A fully featured game, but with advances in technology hopefully its not as long of a wait.
I hope they get it right the next go around and clean up the bugs.
While managing the depth we have had in previous entries.
Also while delivering an amazing world again as they have done with Skyrim, and hopefully bigger.

I am not going to condemn Bethesda yet. But when the next game or even the DLCs come out I will know whether or not if I am going to continue supporting this franchise. If they say one word about streamlining during the next games development I won't even buy it unless it is 100% clear that the game will retain the depth this series was built on. The faction questlines and the obviously rushed development are inexcusable. Not to mention the loads of other things in the game that feel half done.

Bethesda. Please just take your time and don't give two [censored] about a release date. Just make the game and make sure its complete and optimized for every platform. The coding in Skyrim is an absolute nightmare.

Morrowind was popular, Oblivion was even more popular. Skyrim has gone mainstream, that is pretty much fact now. It's second only to cod in sales and here in the UK it's the only game that has knocked EA and Activision's games off of the number 1 spot since 2002.

Since November 11th the most played game on Steam is Skyrim, if you check the Steam stats right this minute you will see that Skyrim is currently being played by more players than the next two games combined.. Valve has also said that Skyrim is the fastest selling game in Steams history. Out selling all other pc games by 3-1. I have no doubt that overall there are more cod players out there than Skyrim, but whether we like it or not Skyrim has succeeded in attracting the masses.

Question is, what does that mean for the future of TES? is it what the OP asks? will we get bigger and better? or will we get more streamlining?

Better A.I. is needed to take games to the next generation; people that truely remember you (or have heard stories/rumors) and react accordingly. Guards that don't just try to arrest you but are actively looking for you if you have a bounty on your head. The towns population yelling for the guards and pointing you out. Or a hero of the people and having people walk up and try to give you something as thanks. Even giving you quests that go no where due to them taking a rumor and turning it into fact. A reputation system that impacts how you have to act around different factions in the game (boldly walking down the street or sneaking around in disguise).

Might take a "folding machine" setup if the NPC population is large but shortcuts can be coded in (forgetfulness, misidentification, etc).

Nope, they just use the same garbage engine, year after year.

Uldred

In my opinion, this success will lead to a better and more advanced Fallout game. The success from that will allow a more advanced TES game.

Yeah ugh morrowind for sure broke Bethesda into the mainstream. It won game of the year like ten years ago.

I'm sure good things will come from Skyrim's massive success. More money being put into the next game, for one. That can never be a bad thing. I'm sure the next game will blow all our minds, too. If Skyrim is one of the best games I've ever played, I shudder to think what the next game will be like.

Funny since: "The Xbox 360 was set as Oblivion's base platform, being the "easiest to develop for", in the words of Pete Hines; the PC, being more like a "random amalgamation of graphics cards and RAM and processors", and poorly "defined"."
Is it any wonder there are plenty of people that aren't very compelled with Skyrim? What's the common denominator?

Uldred

Is this an indictment on Bethesda, or a continuation of the EA rant? It's not like Bethesda isn't guilty (intentional or not) of this also.

Uldred

HAHAHAHA...oh darlin' thats priceless!

For those of you that have only just noticed the series with Skyrim let me fill in the data points for you so you can plot the series course and future.
I suspect in TES 6 it will be a bigger area/land to explore but by the same stroke the game will get less involved to play.

No more skills like "one handed" or "destruction"...no...theyll all be combined into three "magic", "stealth" and "combat" skills.

Probably have unlimited ammunition too...you just buy a themed quiver for the type and away you go.

If between now and then middleware companies develop realtime sand movement software its DEFINITELY going to take place in http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Elsweyr and Bethesda will take every opportunity to show off their realtime shifiting sands to the exclusion of all else!

Id love them to make the game more involving, more skills, more items, more places, more spells, more weapon/armor types...but seeing as the thinning is being rewarded with massive sales I just dont see it happening.

...but I do see newcomers for whom the next title will be their first TES game will declare in blood that its the best evar!!!...and crucify you if you dare hint any different!

Ahh capitalism...we might have had a good series there!

I think we can say goodbye to TES as an RPG series.

What do you mean by bigger?

Bigger budget? Definitely
More stuff? Almost certainly
New features? Sure
Larger map? Probably not, I think they feel like this size map is ideal, Skyrim and Oblivion have both had about the same size map so I don't think they will change it much.

I agree with the gist of your post. I'd disagree with skill removal except that I vehemently argued on the forum last year when somebody said attributes would be stripped to stamina, health and magic (secret employee post, maybe?).

I'm betting on Summerset Isle for TES 6 for 2 reasons: human looking inhabitants and Thalmor story build up.