One might assume that, after finishing up Fallout 4 and all of its downloadable content, Bethesda Game Studios will move to the next big thing, whether that be The Elder Scrolls VI or something else. After all, they have been a single-game studio since 2002. But it sounds like they have far grander plans.
Bethesda Game Studios, of course, is the Maryland-based studio responsible for games like Skyrim and Fallout 4. Though they share a name with their publisher, Bethesda Softworks, BGS is a development house that works separately from sister companies like Arkane (Dishonored) and id (Doom).
Today at DICE in Las Vegas, comedian Pete Holmes asked Fallout 4 director Todd Howard what he and his team at BGS are doing next. Howard answered that first they have to finish up Fallout 4‘s DLC — including updates like “survival mode” and presumably the mod creation kit — and then…
We actually have three kinda longer-term projects we’re doing that are all — we’ll talk about them at a much future date, but they’re different than anything we’ve done before, while also being a Bethesda-style game, big and crazy — in many ways different than things we’ve done before.
Three projects makes for an interesting shift for the studio, which most observers had assumed would be switching off between Fallout and Elder Scrolls games for the foreseeable future. Howard also added that Bethesda’s new Montreal-based studio — also part of BGS — will be helping out with their mobile projects like Fallout Shelter and the still-unreleased card game based on The Elder Scrolls. Presumably Howard and crew are working on a new Elder Scrolls game, but it sounds like they have more ambitious plans in the works as well.
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38 responses to “Sounds Like Bethesda’s Changing Things Up After Fallout 4”
After reflection Fallot 3, 4 & skyrim all feel very similar. I enjoyed everyone of them but they’ll need to makes some big changes otherwise the formula will become overused and stale.
Fallout 4 most of all I felt like I wad replaying another game and god bored very early.
I love building crazy looking stuff in settlements! I’ve gone over an hour in the game without killing something, gotta be a record in a fallout game!
Yup. I agree. I put lots of time into Oblivion but all of the others felt like riffs on the same song.
I think they need more substance. More actual stories to put your teeth into. The vast size of their games is hurting them when the options for dealing with stuff are so limited.
Did love Oblivion though. Still remember how pumped I was when I first started playing it.
As someone who doesn’t like skyrim, I miss Black Isle and Fallout 1&2. I haven’t seen a good top down turn based RPG since :(.
Divinity original sin?
After reflection Fallot 3, 4 & skyrim all feel very similar. I enjoyed everyone of them but they’ll need to makes some big changes otherwise the formula will become overused and stale.
Fallout 4 most of all I felt like I was replaying another game and got bored very early.
After reflection your two comments feel very similar. I enjoyed everyone of them but they’ll need to make some big changes otherwise the formula will become overused and stale.
Fallout 4 most of all I felt like I was replaying another game and god bored very early.
-I completely agree, only clocked about 20 hrs in fallout 4 before putting it aside. Particularly since they stripped out just about any option of resolving anything except for ‘shoot stuff’. Boring.
It definitely wasn’t the RPG I was hoping for. But in terms of exploration it really hit home for me, I had to have a few weeks of other games in between massive sessions this time though.
i just found everything in it to be way too ‘same same, been here, done this’. I was very disappointed with FO4 tbh. On top of the lack of problem resolution options, the other big killer for me was the extremely lacking side quests. How many times must I go somewhere and kill everything in sight?
Oh I agree about the killing part,it got extremely stale. I just liked picking a direction and seeing what I’d find on the way. But when you consider you could do that in the previous games, AND enjoy side quests with nuance, speech checks and the like then Yeh fo4 was definitely lacking.
I agree. FO4 was the first time a Bethesda game just hasn’t really done it for me. The writing felt like a step down, especially coming of the back of The Witcher 3.
yes me too, the ‘trouble’ for all RPGS in the future is they will be mentally compared to the phenomenal witcher 3 and its insanely great variety/characters/locations/etc 😛
And the story. It just felt like what you were doing mattered. And Geralt is such a cool character.
yes that was a big part too. What you chose to do/respond really seemed to have an affect, not just a different branch of the same tree so to speak
Cue Mass Effect style space themed game 😛
^ This.
If they could make a 1950’s retro-future RPG in space where you could fly to planets and space stations exploring huge Bethesda game maps, that would be great. They could make it really silly like Flash Gordon and pretty much add DLC solar systems to the galaxy for years to come.
I would buy that in an instant.
Man I’d said that same thing to my cousin last night, I got back into skyrim like 3 nights ago (Weirdly enough so have 4 people i know… out of the blue) which prompted the whole “Why not in the future that isn’t blown to shit”
haha ironically I installed and started playing Skyrim again in the last few days for the first time in a long time as well. But I can attribute that to the Kotaku article about the new mods…it got me in the mood
I read another article recently that claimed Bethesda were aiming for a 2019 release date for the Elder Scrolls 6 and it would likely be set in Argonia. 8 years is a long time between drinks for ES fans, and the longest in the ES timeline by 2 years (Arena 1994, Daggerfall 1996, Morrowind 2002, Oblivion 2006, Skyrim 2011.)
Ah, but they have a game for Elder Scrolls fans to fill that between game gap…
If you’re referring to ESO then I agree with you, I actually quite enjoy it. But as it seems like the vast majority of Elder Scrolls fans can’t stand the game (Generic MMO set in the ES world, it’s nothing like skyrim blah blah) then I think that Majority will argue that there is no game between Skyrim and Argonia
I was referring to ESO.
Though I have no interest in it personally, I was echoing umpteen marketing messages from umpteen PR mouthpieces trying to cross sell their stuff…
Well they’re not going to get rid of ES and Fallout games altogether. Maybe though, this is my hunch, that with the Elder Scrolls they might build on the ESO map and have that as a dynamic World where they can change things on the fly, but hopefully still keep it as a single player experience. Obviously no idea if that’s the case or not but it would cut down on development time a lot as the main World is there and they could focus more on smaller details.
Either way, from a business point of view after the (commercial) success of Fallout 4 there’s no doubt that an Elder Scrolls VI wouldn’t fly off the shelves faster than a Deadpool opening weekend. The E3 conference should be interesting as there’s no BGS game upcoming other than the remaining Fallout 4 DLC
ES VR
FO VR
Somebrightandshinyplasticneonfuture game VR
Just guessing…
Or if they follow trends it will be prehistoric primitive with maybe a dash of lost tech.
Still working my way through fallout 4 with 70 hours in. Loved all of the fallout games created by interplay and Bethesda and I feel that fallout 4 is the closest to fallout 2 in terms of characters and awesome places to explore. Just wish it had mre of that dark humour from the isometric games. Looking forward to the dlc this year and then doom later on.
i really am missing the dark humour and the non-combat quest resolutions. Other than that, I’m enjoying the hell out of FO4. It’s a nice place to get lost in.
Yeah I think that this fallout has some great character but it all feels too serious. Fallout 2 is my favourite game in the series. I loved the dialogue and, even though I had to read most of it, I didn’t skip any of it. Where as in Fallout 4 I’m skipping most of the dialogue but I do love the world and the combat. Hopefully the dlc is just as good!
Would be nice to see something a bit different from them. Using the same engine for Fallout and Elder Scrolls has made them all feel very similar which is good from a branding point of view but bad for a fresh experience.
Well put. That engine needs to die. It feels lazy recycling it over and over. “Skyrim with guns” indeed.
Fallout MMO, incorporating all major cities of the US.
Real survival against other real humans. Or Ghouls, or super mutants… Whoever you want to be.
Probably be like ESO – sounds great in theory but bad in practice. The best part of Fallout/ES games is that it’s your world to mould as you see fit. Kill whoever you want, finish quests in the way you want, (F4 build where you want) and it’s a persistent, permanent change.
It’s hard to re-create the same experience for an MMO.
It does sound awesome in theory but you would be so worried about another player stealing your legendary items from your settlement you wouldn’t leave it!!
Maybe you could have your own ‘shack’ and the door is inaccessible to everyone else?
Whatever they do, I hope they are working on a new engine.
The engine definitely needs to die. I loved playing through Fo4 for 80 hours but it doesn’t matter how long they take to make ES VI, if it uses the same dated character animations it won’t have the same magic as Skyrim.
We’re now on the third(?) major iteration of Gamebryo. It really is getting long in the tooth.
As long as ambitious means changing up the game engine they’ve been using/tacking things on to. I want nothing more than for them to come out and say that Elder Scrolls won’t be seen for a another year or two, so that they can fix it.
I’m still going back to ES:V to this day. I reinstalled it about two weeks ago and have added another 40 or so hours to it already. I can wait