I wouldn't be surprised if they hired a bunch more developers as they seem to be expanding and god know they're raking in the $$$. No matter what TES VI will be a huge success sales wise but I feel like if it's not up to par with peoples expectations and doesn't expand the way it needs to they'll start losing their popularity.

I'm sure Pete Hines let Todd Howard start up Bethesda Game Studios Montreal to help Bethesda Game Studios Maryland with helping develop DLC's and expansion packs to release for sale for Fallout 4 and then move fully onto developing The Elder Scrolls VI, but Bethesda Game Studios Maryland or Bethesda Game Studios Montreal could be developing a brand new Intellectual Property (IP) of a video game as well.

Todd Howard said at Gamescom 2014 in a YouTube video interview that he wants to try something new.

Anyways for me to see The Elder Scrolls VI be a bigger success in selling copies than Fallout 4 is for the dialogue wheel to be removed and the armor and weapons degradation system to be added back in.

I still believe there are many people around the planet who still want to purchase The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim to this day today if Bethesda Game Studios added the armor and weapons degradation system back in.

I'm convinced at least one million people or two million people want it.

Yea that new game studio is probably more along the lines of working on their B-Tier games and new IP's leaving a main group open to develop for their A-Tier Games like TES and Fallout. They obviously hired a bunch more people for the new studio but hopefully they also hired more for their native office. 100 people just isn't enough to develop a huge open world game.

Has Bethesda Game Studios ever explained why they keep such a small team?

Todd Howard has said that it's about as big as he's comfortable managing.

Well he needs to get out of his comfort zone then because it's hindering their games.

I'm not sure about Fallout 4 getting DX12 support. But TES 6 absolutely. BTW ESO will get it in the next few months, well.. nobody cares about it anyway.

I usually advocate for compact world with ton of contents rather than empty outer space (Daggerfall hue), but I should mention that FO4 felt bit too crowded. I think it would have been nice to have that amount of contents with about 3~4 times landmass. I suspect that might be the kind of density Beth might want to pursue with TES6.

Inventory Easy

While I understand clutter items can enhance the immersion and add depth to game world, sometimes it just gets in the way of actually having fun - and way too often.

For instance, many merchants sit behind table or booth filled with worthless items on display. Since I play on 3rd camera only, this causes me to accidentally steal junks while trying to talk to the merchant behind it. Similar issue would be managing weight in dungeons; Often you see valuable items sitting on clutters such as bowls and plates. Once I accidentally pick them up, I have to run through hundreds of items and tracking it down to make sure I don't have any dead weight in my inventory. W/V tab helps, but still need manual filtering when you're carrying some special items with low values.

Looting enemies can be pain too. I always use the w/v tab to sort out valuable items only, but doing it every enemy seems a bit tedious.

And then finally, storage. IDK how everyone else is playing, but I always come back home with bunch of different items that need to be stored away. Sorting out which items to keep and which to store away is tiresome task. The worst part is that I have to manually go through one by one and store using R key, then E key to confirm multiple. Especially when storing alchemy ingredients, some of them have stack of 6 or more while some others less than 6. I can't just store them all by Spamming R. I have to use E key when going through more than 6 stacks. The fact that pick up window uses different key setting doesn't help either; often I press R in pick up window and accidentally pick up everything in container, which means I have to either reload or start over with my effort to stock up.

Switching between weapons/spells is pain too. Since both hands can hold individual spells/wep while shield can only be held in left hand, this can be quite clunky and confusing. IMO, the Skyrim system of assigning functions per hand / mouse key is a fail - especially since dual casting is fail due to balance issue. I know some pep really love the concept of dual wielding, but I think there could be better way of setting up dual wielding. Oblivion system would have been better.

I thought about these issues a bit, and came up with few suggestions that may make my life easier. FO4 looting/interaction system also gave me some fresh ideas!

Context Steal: Player will NOT pick up item unless sneaking. Similarly, locks (that you do not own the key for) in town will not be attempted unless in sneak mode. (important: only in town) Activating locked door while not sneaking will cause PC to knock on the door, urging the random NPC to come out and talk to you.

Auto Loot: Player would be able to set up the desired V/W ratio of loot in settings, and press R button to pick up everything that qualifies in nearby area. Players would only be able to do it while not in combat. OFC, if you want to manually pick up an item (Using E) that doesn't qualify, nothing's stopping you.

Favorite/Junk tag: Player would be able to tag an item as favorite or junk. Items tagged as favorite will be auto looted even if it doesn't meet V/W ratio qualification. Items tagged Junk cannot be picked up until unmarked. Quest items exempted.

Inventory 10: Upon activating a container or merchants, player would see two inventory windows; left window being container and right window player's. Items will be displayed in small icons instead of list, and players can choose multiple items at a time and drag them to move just as using Windows. Players would still be able to sort items according to weight, value, stolen, name, etc. Hovering cursor will display item details.

Player may choose to inspect the item up close by double clicking the item, which causes the Player Character to exit windows mode to hold up the item in similar manner as that of Character Creation - except that the focal point would be the item in his hand. Player would be able to rotate his hand and zoom at the item in this mode to get better view.

Gear Preset: Instead assigning individual items, why not just use presets to switch everything at once? For instance, a thief toon may have 2 presets; first set with Daggers/ DB cloth set and second set with bow/ leather armor set.

...and potentially backfire. He's the game director, if he's given more people than he's comfortable with, then it could cause him to mismanage the project and hinder their games even more. Besides, you can't just throw more people at a problem and expect it to be solved quicker. It's about having the right people for the job, not more people for the job.

There was a AMD Radeon Pro graphics card leak about one month before Fallout 4 released for sale with it saying Fallout 4, DOOM, and some other video games will be receiving DirectX 12 support.

I think it was fake.

I can't find the picture, maybe you will have luck finding it. It's there unless it was taken down.

Pretty much all of that sounds good, MagicSteel.

The way Skyrim handles equipping spells/items is a bit annoying, but it should be improved upon, not scrapped. The simple fix of choosing which hand to equip something in would be great. Hotkeyed items/spells could be set to always equip in a specific hand, as well. That would solve most of the problems.

EDIT: About Beth getting a bigger team: Todd Howard has made three of the best games of all time with his small team. People play them for thousands of hours.

Thousands of hours.

They aren't great when compared to the ideal TES game, which doesn't and can't exist, but they are really, really good when compared to other actual video games. Even Oblivion. I think he knows what he's doing when he chooses the size of his team.

Not me. I don't have thousands of hours played of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim due to it being boring to play after about thirty minutes or one hour.

Because there is no armor and weapons degradation system, no spell making, no spears, etc like what The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind has and what The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion has (Minus no spears).

If Bethesda Game Studios added the armor and weapons degradation system back in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, spell making, spears, separate armor pieces. Then I will have play The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim for thousands of hours.

At least there is duel wielding of spells and weapons, sprinting, shouts, dragons, and dragon words you can learn.

Fallout 4 I still haven't purchased to this day today because I feel like I will just end up disappointed and have my money wasted. At least Bethesda Game Studios added back the separate armor system like how The elder Scrolls III: Morrowind has.

Yeah... a perfect example of 'Bigger doesn't always equate to better' is Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed team(s). Over 2000 people and they've basically created the same game over and over for the last 10 years.


I do think Bethesda needs to start operating with more hands on deck, but it's not as easy as just picking up bodies. A lot of stress in the Game Industry comes from personal conflicts, so people need to 'fit'.


One avenue that they really need to explore in terms of personnel and technology, though, is modern motion capture. The animations in TES (and Fallout) games have always been clunky and their facial animations, when attempted, have been lodged so deeply in the Uncanny Valley that it's haunting. New Mo-Cap tech allows for real time, high resolution rendering of body movements and facial animations, allowing for developers to more easily perfect and tweak the animations with the actors in studio, instead of the hassle of doing it by hand, or bringing the actors back for alternative takes. Similarly, new approaches to procedural generation are less prone to weird clipping issues and floating objects, and can handle more complex set pieces in their rendering.


There's a lot of new and upcomming tech that COULD allow Bethesda to do a lot more work, more effieicnetly, without dramatically increasing their staff. If they adopt it. Though, a willingness to play with new toys has never really been a problem for Bethesda...

and yet Nintendo has been doin that with Mario for 20 and no one bats an eyelash




the AC games aren't terrible, but they certainly rely a bit to much on the following the exact same formula that originally garnered players attention (although black flag was sort of mildly different from its predecessors, and the change was actually pretty nice from a gameplay perspective).. as a result, the series has become "more of the same" because they don't deviate from that formula enough, a fate that I think even Bethesda may eventually encounter with TES if they are not open to try new things..


thats what bothers me with people posting "just make it like Morrowind/Oblvion/Skyrim only in a different place", for both the franchise and the industry to properly develop they need to be willing to try new things rather than just rely on the tried and true.. we have seen many franchises become dull from sticking to much to the formula that made then appealing in the first place..

I agree with this. I would rather see Bethesda try new ideas that I don't like than see them endlessly recycle ideas that I do like and become stale.

What if they took the foundation from Skyrim, mechanics etc., and worked more on quests, perks, dialogue and that kind of stuff? Tweaking and polishing, instead of creating something new with it's own problems.

I don't know if recreating the formula with each game keeps them from improving other stuff, such as quests, but if that's the case, I'd rather have Skyrim 2: Improved Skyrim. At least they would have more time to work on the world and NPCs, right?

Like New Vegas. It didn't feel stale to me.

Of course, I don't mean they should do the same game over and over again, forever.

I could live with that.

I'm not suggesting they reinvent the wheel each time. My main point was that I admire Bethesda's willingness to take chances. They had to know that, for instance, cutting six skills and Levitation in Oblivion, cutting classes and spellmaking in Skyrim, cutting all skills and adding a voiced protagonist in Fallout 4 would be controversial and possibly even cost them sales. It must have been a great temptation to play it safe and copy the proven formulas from the past games. But they have never done that and I respect them for it.

Very true. They've always talked up their internal culture as being integral to making great games, but obviously with the new Montreal team they're taking baby steps toward expanding.

Yes and no. Mo-cap is a useful thing and can certainly add a lot to cut-scenes and in-game animations, but the issue with Bethesda's animations comes down to more than just that. First of all, they need to start using far more advanced animation blending tools - the sort that come as standard in UDK and so on, but are completely lacking in the CK.

It's also worth noting that outside of cut-scenes, mo-cap is definitely a useful frame of reference but you shouldn't underestimate the importance of good animators. Film (which is more my domain) still relies far more heavily on hand animation despite what you might be inclined to think: that includes all of the best CGI studios (Pixar, DreamWorks etc.), who still almost exclusively animate by hand. And going back to cut-scenes, the dynamic nature of Bethesda games makes it difficult, in part because the game can't predict when and where most conversations will take place in the way that, as an example, Far Cry can. And it still leaves the issue of there being so much dialogue in those games that it'd be hugely expensive and time consuming to implement...

But yes, if they had better (and perhaps just more) animators, and more up-to-date animating tools, then mo-cap could definitely help improve things.

Just so there's no confusion: Bethesda has been employing motion capture for years. They used it extensively in Skyrim and Fallout 4 and I believe they may even have used it a bit in Fallout 3. I remember hearing stories about Oblivion using some small amounts of motion capture. But if they did use it for that game I imagine they used it pretty sparingly.

I believe most of the problem with Bethesda's animations is related to what tabularasa101 mentioned above: it is simply not utilized very well. It's one thing to have motion capture data but it's another thing entirely to turn that data into realistic-seeming animations in a video game.

Agreed. I didn't mean to imply that Bethesda simply doesn't utilise these toolsets, but rather that they either aren't very good with them, or aren't using them efficiently. The point was more that newer developments in motion capture and procedural generation make their use FASTER and more efficient, allowing for greater development time spend elsewhere or on larger volumes. Basically, more efficient use of resources could allow Bethesda to make bigger and more in-depth games without expanding their workforce.

I agree. And while i'd rather they spend some time focusing on baseline mechanics that can be expanded on later (and adopting a more refine and tweak approach rather than a reinvent approach...) part of what makes Bethesda games so enjoyable is, while familiar, each very much feels like a different game.

Compared to, say, the Arkham, Assassin's Creed, Dark Souls, Mario, Call of Duty etc. franchises... Each game plays so similarly that they basically just become a sequence of progressively prettier graphics. With a few exceptions in terms of controls (Dark Souls changing controls for no reason, for instance, or Call of Duty swapping Melee and Grenade) and the occasional new feature, they all play and ultimately feel the same. Even the 'New' features typically become like mini-games within the series, being relegated to a single title and never appearing again (Black Flag's sailing being the most glaring of these problems).

But Bethesda's gamest all feel like different games. Even old hands typically have to take a few minutes to reorient, adapt to changes and almost re-learn the game (sometimes more than others). While those changes may not always be GOOD, they at least keep things feeling distinct.

I agree 100% with funnybunny and you that Bethesda Game Studios should always try new things for their next newly developed video games, but removing features and gameplay mechanics is bad.

I'm not happy that the armor and weapons degradation system has been removed from the video games that they have been developing and releasing for sale since they released The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim for sale.

I'm happy The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim got duel wielding of spells and weapons, dragons and shouts, and sprinting, but removing the armor and weapons degradation system, spell making, the levitation since The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, classes, skills. If Bethesda Game Studios kept all of these features in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. I think The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim would of been the best The Elder Scrolls video game since The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind.

I'm happy that they added back the separate armor pieces in Fallout 4, but beyond that I don't know anything else of how Fallout 4 functions since I still have not purchased Fallout 4 to this day today still . And I really want to play Fallout 4, but the features they removed and the features they added I feel like I will be disappointed and that I will lose my money on something I won't enjoy playing much, this already happened to me with The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim I feel very disappointed with it.

Look at how beauty Skyrim in CryEngine,Unity is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsYzK8pykbM , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BJ_GpdvKDM

One looks like generic snow and ruins (though, admitedly, rather pretty snow and ruins) and the other frankly looks worse than Skyrim with even a mediocre texture pack.

Once again, though, THE ENGINE IS NOT THE PROBLEM. BETHESDA is the limiting factor. We've already seen modders produce amazing visuals within the Creation Engine.

I'd rather have repair system than tempering. Oblivion was about right I think. I loved lv75 125% perk, and lv50 perk also worked as counterweight that balances magic items.

Better looking bodies

One of persisting issues I've seen in previous Beth games is that human shoulder looks odd when actors lift their arms. It looks like blow up six doll with arms forced up. Usually it's not as noticeable since majority of players play in 1st view, and all armors come with bulky shoulder pads. But play as mage or loot an enemy, the issue surfaces.

Might be nice to implement actual shoulder joint and neck muscles that move with arm. Hope I'm not asking too much here.. it might actually require serious upgrade from what they're doing such as elastic body tissues and real bone structure instead of stick figure skeleton.

I really appreciated what they have done with Face Morph in FO4. It's intuitive, detailed, beautiful, with lots of options. I just hope they do the same or even better with TES6.

It maybe be also way too burdensome for most PC out there, but I want to see flowing elastic hair that can fit inside of helmet, able to flow down past shoulder and back. I think it would also use same tech there; real clothing physics. Instead of having solid block of cloth, I want to see cloth actually wrapping and shaping around the body. Along with better shoulder joint and soft body tissue, I think this could look amazing.

I am hoping Bethesda re introduces features that were removed from the transition between Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim.


So I will post what I see happening to the series. I posted this in the Steam Skyrim discussion board.



Design plan for TES6.

The design plan for the elder scrolls 6.

"Hmm guys what should we remove next?"


"Lets remove knifes and Smiting/Armorer. They are too hard to use."

"We should combine Destruction and Conjuration, because they confuse people. "


"We should combine 1 handed and 2 handed weapons; they also seem to confuse people."


"We should remove the ability to buy a house. "


"We need to make combat easier for 2 year olds."


"We need to remove the ability to manually save. Lets face it. No body uses that feature........"


"People get lost; the map doesn't seem to work properly, so we will also remove that."


"So essentially we are making CoD and slapping an RPG title on it."


I sure as hell hope it doesn't come to this; but knowing bethesda, they will probably remove something else in the next game.