Bethesda, We Need to Talk

It may come as no surprise to anybody reading this that I'm a fan of The Elder Scrolls series. I have been for 25 years since the release of the Arena in 1994. Since then, I've played every game in the series, with the exception of the mobile ones that came out in the early 2000s. It's not an exaggeration to say that I love the series. However, as you may have guessed from the title of this post, I also hate the series and what it's become. So, why am I writing about this? I mean, the last Elder Scrolls game was released eight years ago and the next iteration isn't due for a few more. I'm not exactly treading new ground. here. It just seems like all those changes that Skyrim made to the Elder Scrolls model, all the things that I didn't necessarily like but convinced myself I could live with, I can't really live with them anymore. In that sense, it's almost like a long-term relationship that's beginning to putter out. So, I guess I'm writing this to explore where I'm at in regard to this series and see if I can come to some sort of closure.

To reach the end, we need to start at the beginning. My history with the Elder Scrolls franchise dates back 25 years to the first game in the series, Arena. This was a game that I'd never really heard of before playing and stumbled upon quite by accident. I had a friend who was a big PC guy and I don't mean just games, he would build his own rigs before that was even really a thing. Anyway, at some point in my teens, my friend gave me the opportunity to purchase a CD-ROM full of pirated games (gasp!). At the time I didn't care as much about game piracy since I was poor and loved video games and this disc had close to 100 full games on it. As I was going through the directory of the CD and trying out all of the games it contained, one of the first ones I found was Arena. I thought the game was some sort of fighting game like Street Fighter or Mortal Combat, what I found instead was an immersive and expansive role playing game. The thing with CRPGs back then was that most of the best ones were top-down viewed and usually required that the player control a party of six adventurers. Area was different, it was in the first person perspective and there was only one adventurer to control. I quite enjoyed the game but I was aware of its numerous flaws including clunky and unintuitive combat, a rather uninteresting story (find the lost pieces of the magical McGuffin to defeat the evil wizard) and the world, while huge felt somewhat empty. I saw potential in the game though and thoroughly enjoyed playing it. To this day it is one of only two Elder Scrolls games that I've played the main quest line to completion.

While I enjoyed Arena, I didn't consider it one of those life-changing experiences or watershed moments in video game history. It was a solid but flawed game and what it did do was put Bethesda as a company on the map for me. Then, a couple years later, Bethesda released Arena's sequel, Daggerfall and I was hooked. Like it's predecessor, Daggerfall had a lot of problems. It's combat was still awful, it was buggy as hell and it had an uninteresting main story. For all of those flaws, the game did one thing very well, as did Arena before it, and that was offer the player choice. I don't just mean that the game offered a plethora of choices in what races and classes I could be but it also let me do whatever the hell I wanted to do. This may not seem like a big thing nowadays but back in 1996 it was huge. CRPGs were very much a theme park experience, due mostly to the technical limitations of the time. However, coming from pen and paper RPGs, I always disliked the railroading that typically came with CRPGs. Daggerfall didn't do that, though, it gave you free reign to explore its massive world. Don't like the main story? No worries! Get a job with the Fighters Guild and make some money so you can buy a horse or a boat, or a house. The possibilities seemed endless.

After Daggerfall, Bethesda released a pair of games - Battlespire and Redguard - that were set in the same world but weren't considered true sequels. These were known as "Elder Scrolls Adventures" and they were...meh. Battlespire used the same engine as Daggerfall with improved graphics and was more like a survival horror game as the player tries to fight his way out of a floating citadel. Redguard  on the other hand was more of a 3D graphic action/adventure game. I played both and didn't really take to either.

While I loved Daggerfall,  it's buggy nature and directionless gameplay soon started to bother me and my attention soon shifted to other things. Then, Morrowind came along. I was initially upset that the playable area in the game was going to be significantly smaller than Daggerfall's but I gave it a try anyway. The game took advantage of new 3D graphics and while it was smaller in scope, there was much more to do and had not only an interesting (if stereotypical) main story but the faction/side quests actually had stories to tell as well. It was absolutely engrossing. Bethesda simplified the combat but still kept in place a lot of the mechanics that made the game cool, while adding some new ones (Birth Signs). The game was also shipped with its creation tool-set, so players could create their own adventures, giving the game almost endless replay-ability. I loved Morrowind and it stands as my favorite of the series.

I honestly believe that Morrowind was both the high point of the series and also the beginning of its slow, almost imperceptible degradation. That's a statement that obviously requires explanation. First, let me state that I'm not writing a "things were better in my day" old man article. I've put considerable hours into both Oblivion and Skyrim, purchasing them both on multiple platforms. In fact, I still play Skyrim. I think it's just that after Morrowind, Bethesda seemed to realize what they had and how they could take advantage of it. For starters, Morrowind was the first in the series to be released on a home console, the XBox, and even though it wasn't a runaway smash on the console it did well. I think this encouraged Bethesda to tone down a lot of the RPG-heavy elements in the next game, Oblivion, so it would appeal to a broader audience. In practice, that meant making combat more player skill-based than character skill-based, removing some skills and adding in objective markers and in-map fast travel. There's nothing inherently wrong with any this, in fact it's good business practice to make your product as appealing to as many people as possible. For me, it just hit a sour note as it just seemed like they had taken something I loved  and "dumbed it down" for a mass audience that didn't even really like RPGs. In addition, Oblivion also started to show concerning signs of where the industry in general was going as far as paid DLC and microtransactions go (Horse Armor, anyone?). It still had a healthy modding community and wide world to explore, which was alright by me.

Five years later, Skyrim hit the shelves and it took the series which was flying high after Oblivion into the stratosphere. Again, Bethesda did it's best to appeal to that broad audience and they certainly succeeded. Gone were most of a characters stats (like Strength, Agility and Intelligence), which were replaced with three basic traits (Health, Stamina and Magika). Skills were overhauled as well in favor of the widely-used "perk" system. The factions, which at one point had skill requirements and often fought against each other, were opened up to any character (can't cast a spell to save your life? Sure, you can join the Mages guild!). I wasn't a fan, but it didn't matter, the game looked fantastic and there were still all those tasty mods and I could live with all that other stuff. Then time went by, I noticed instead of properly supporting and patching its game, Bethesda relied on the modding community to do that. They did release a few decent expansions but the content offered paled in comparison to the expansions released in previous games (Bloodmoon and Tribunal). I also started to notice that the game was too damn easy and I needed to rely on mods just to provide me with any sort of challenge. Also, instead of working on the next in the series, Bethesda spent time and resources on porting and re-releasing the game on every system imaginable, trying to squeeze as much money out of that cash cow as they could. Then came the final straw, Bethesda decided that not only were they going to let modders do most of their job for them, but they were also going to make money off of them too (The Creation Club).

So, I'm several hundred words in at this point and have I reached any conclusions? I think so. I dearly love the Elder Scrolls series and I will continue to play all of the ones that I own, as I still derive great enjoyment from them. However, I will not be partaking in the Elder Scrolls 6 when it finally comes out and Bethesda will no longer get any of my money. In short, I'm breaking up with them.

It's not you, Bethesda, it's me. This is hard, I know, but I'll be alright. Unlike a real relationship, I can still go back and relive all of the good times I had with you by simply loading up an old save game. You know what? That's exactly what I'm going to do. Now, where did I put that map of Vvardenfell....