So who here remembers the http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLdtHsBfImo of Skyrim? Well I bet a lot of you have seen it :user:

So anyway, I was browsing YouTube and came across this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpMB950dYjY&feature=related. I thought it was really good and fit well with the other video.

But to keep from getting hit with a cane by the big bear with a top hat ( :poke: hi ro!) I thought up a good question: If the TES series went backwards and started with Skyrim and then today we would be waiting for Arena (or a similar game with a similar namesake) would it have the same success like moneywise, hardware, tech., ect? What platforms? Would it still do the traditional 1st person view? Would it of been a platformer or birds-eye-view instead? Think about it and hopefully I was clear enough for you to understand. Just let me know if I wasn't! :slap:

Oh and btw, I could not figure out if Skyrim or general TES was a good fit for this topic so any mod can obviously move if needed! Thanks! :clap:

Oh and I know Arena was the 90's, just to throw it out there :spotted owl:

That video was pretty amusing.

Also: I have no idea what you are trying to ask with that question. Are you saying that the TES series would go backwards in terms of technology, etc?

Of course, it's still an elder scrolls game. We would welcome it and worship it eternally.

Yes. :tes:

Like if it went from Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim to Skyrim, Oblivion, Morrowind, Daggerfall and so on, would it still be a success today? Look at it this way, since Daggerfall is still very popular in the TES community, and if it went backwards how would Oblivion set the stage for future TES games? (Like DF was the breaking point in Todd Howard's career and how DF revolutionized TES and influenced other games, what if Todd did a game similar to Oblivion other than DF? Knowing how Oblivion got mixed reviews in the gaming world)

Hope I was clear, but again let me know if not :slap:

I don't think it would do nearly as well. I'm not entirely sure if I'd even play it. I know some of you are shouting "BLASPHEMY!" but I couldn't play it. I'd be okay if it was like MW as far as graphics go, but I couldn't go back THAT far.

If I'm understanding what you're saying here, then no, I don't think it would be nearly as popular. Games are expected to progress in terms of technology, graphics, etc. As a throwback to days gone by, it might get some nostalgia purchases, but a series that got progressively more primitive? They would be digging their own grave.

Well as you may or may not have known, Arena was originally slated to be a gladiator-style game where you and your teammates would travel all across Tamriel, fighting in competitions across various cities and provinces before going to the Imperial City to fight in a championship tournament. This was later condensed down to a party-based RPG and then the single-player RPG we all know and love (and loathe starting dungeons for) today. Fun fact - you can actually see http://www.imperial-library.info/content/elder-scrolls-arena of Arena during its party RPG phase here on the Imperial Library. In some ways, the game seemed to be far more colorful and populous with NPCs then than it was now. But Arena's still a great game to play now and then, when you're too tired for the dungeons of Daggerfall and Morrowind/Oblivion have been crashing on you.

Anyway, this alternate release timeline of yours would probably have been radically different from our own. Think about it. You can argue that Daggerfall was an overly ambitious game, a massive epic open-ended world that was meant to be infinitely replayable in the amount of quests and factions there were to interact with. The game itself still holds up amazingly today, with it still being my personal favorite vanilla TES game. But what if Bethesda were a more mature company when they undertook this awesome project, and had better technology and more manpower? I'm getting this vibe that the question the OP posed was what things would be like if Bethesda literally released their older games as-is in the present day, like the TES: Arena we know in 2011. That would be boring. So instead, here's my take: what if each game was "remade" in keeping with the technology at the time?

Skyrim/Morrowind/Oblivion would have been smaller, less ambitious (but detailed nonetheless) DOS games designed for Bethesda to first test the world of Tamriel and their RPG model. But they'd later attempt a huge procedurally generated world: Daggerfall, and this time they would have possibly have had the expertise to meet all of the game's promises and brought about an even greater level of detail still. The ever-excitable Todd Howard would decide, in this parallel universe, that quantity was more impressive than quality and then Bethesda would tackle the whole of Tamriel in a procedural game, The Elder Scrolls: Arena IN 2011! THEY'D BE IN OVER THEIR HEADS!

It'd inevitably...flop...and then Bethesda...would continue making SOULLESS MOUNT & BLADE SANDBOX GAMES! Without their much beloved (though oft-criticised) "reinvent the wheel" mantra they've been using since Morrowind...it'd...be...they'd...ugh...no...NO!

I can't go on! Please! What a nightmare! :ahhh:

That music certainly takes me back. It reminds me of my Pool of Radiance days on the Commodore 64.

:rofl:

Well, maybe you are correct. But they could always just improve on Arena and Daggerfall instead of keeping it the way it is now.

Morrowind is still right smack in the middle which means that game wouldn't change at all most likely.

Well said! Well, except the bottom part :shocking: :foodndrink:

But for the record, you know that I ment if it was 1994 all over again and instead of Arena, they did a game like Skyrim. :slap:

But also, what if we were still in a 8-bit era? As if the N64 or other systems did not exist yet and all TES games looked like Daggerfall? Just a thought :whistling:

It would be awesome.

Of course, the 8-bit NES/PC speaker esque sound effects used in those Skyrim videos are wholly inaccurate. We had the much cooler-sounding Soundblaster cards at the time the game came out, allowing for glorious FM synthesis music like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vIeqK8J3bI which, if I may argue, still sounds way better than the annoying General MIDI instruments everybody uses nowadays when they upload DOS music.

Huh, I didn't now that about sound cards. Thanks for the link!