Lots of interesting thoughts going on here. I wish we actually knew more of the behind the scenes of Bethesda since a lot of this is just groping in the dark based on various observations.

To do some groping of my own, based solely on personal opinion and a bit of random hearsay, I do blame a lot of the gameplay problems with Morrowind and Oblivion on Ken Rolston. I think he was a driving force in creating a vision for Morrowind wherein an RPG is essentially an imagination enhancement tool instead of, you know, a game. Instead of "what tools am I going to use to solve the games' quests?" the idea became more like "I'm going to imagine I'm a ninja, and the game won't respond to me in any way whatsoever! Sweet!" Again, it's hard to say who's responsible for what, but from my view the "dumbing down" trend started seriously reversing with Fallout 3. People love to rag on Todd because he's the face of the series, but he's been with TES in a design capacity since Daggerfall, and his taste in RPGs is actually pretty dang solid. In fact, out of the five people credited as designers on Daggerfall -- Peterson, LeFay, Todd, Kurt, and Bruce Nesmith, three were integral in Fallout 3 and Skyrim, which for me have signified a definite return to form for Bethesda. So no, I don't consider the loss of Ken a bad thing. Nesmith doesn't get a lot of credit on these forums for some reason, but in light of my biased, Daggerfall-is-the-best-game POV, his return has been the best thing that's happened TES in ages.


Certainly not, but I'm not even sure the lore ever "changed direction." It's actually always been a pretty natural evolution, building on things that came before. Arena to Daggerfall is still probably the biggest accumulation of new lore. Coming from Daggerfall and reading the first PGE back when it came out, it didn't feel like a sudden redefinition of everything I knew about TES, but rather an expansion that fit neatly with the lore I already knew. The same is true with Morrowind and Skyrim. There are things I like and things I don't like about where the lore has gone, but I don't think there's ever been a "hamburgers now eat people" moment.

Such a reasonable request.
Wait for Kingdoms of AMalur.
It will be interesting to see what they've done with it - apart from art style , that is, which is atrocious.

This.

Odd that people don't know this. Rolston is a good guy, but TES games aren't where he should be anymore.
Before people go about shouting to get him back, lets see how Kingdoms of Amalur (his current project) works out.

Ken Rolston was definitely an RPG man; see what I found ages back (but never posted):

http://www.rpg.net/oracle/essays/reviewrules.html

(I assume it is one and the same; basically an article about how RPG (paper-and-pencil ones, not CRPG) should be reviewed. Interesting reading, actually.)

Just look at the direction TES has taken since he left; it's slowly becoming Action/Adventure rather than CRPG.

Actually, I double-checked and found I was mistaken: his experience with Arena was in producing the game's CD port. He was not a tester in any way. And he had limited "additional design" work for Daggerfall; he did not test the game nor gave any creative direction.

And no, gameplay is not singularly more important than other elements; for me it goes hand-in-hand with atmosphere. It's impossible to enjoy even the most compelling and addictive gameplay if the rest of the game is so jarring and disorienting that I can't focus... And on the flip side before you try and ignore what I said about "hand-in-hand," it's impossible to enjoy an amazing atmosphere if the gameplay mechanics make it too frustrating to bother spending any time with it. Lastly, being a game tester doesn't make you an expert in how a game should play: it makes one an expert in finding bugs.


No, if anything, the last two games have been examples of continuing the downward trend that Morrowind started. The only reason I don't attack Morrowind itself as much as the two more recent games is because it offered a broad expansion and detailing of lore, while all Oblivion and Skyrim have offered are clichéd action features to appeal to the console crowd. One must also recall that Morrowind was a PC game first, and the Xbox port was decided afterwards; while with the last two games, the Xbox 360 was the only platform the game was really designed for, and the other platforms (including the PC) were basically given ports as an afterthought, with minimal effort and time spent. (which is ironic given that it's possible the PC version has likely outsold the 360 version)

+1 for Julian.

If I must vote.

Is there a developer timeline somewhere that explains who joined the company when and such? Rolston was the lead designer for Morrowind and Oblivion, right? Who took up that role for Skyrim, and who held it for Daggerfall?