My feelings exactly.

I think I would only really accept an outside company making the game if that outside company was Bioware. But if they did, I'd rather they did another Elder Scrolls Adventure, instead of TESV or VI. Their strength is writing, and it is easiest to write a story, if you at least have a predefined character (like Cyrus).

LIONHEAD!

Imagine what the most innovative genius in the RPG making industry (Peter Molyneux) could do with TES!

When a guard stopped to fine/arrest you, you could just respond with a big juicy fart!

Considering that Bethesda has trouble keeping the lore consistent between games, I think it's safe to say that any other company would have a few screwups here and there.



On the other hand, most Bioware games I've played do let you create your own character, granted, sometimes they sacrifice options for the sake of the story (In Mass Effect though you could choose your first name, your last name was always the same, for example, and in KOTOR, no matter who your character was you would always be .) Certainly, Bioware style games can work with a character you create yourself, but games like the Elder Scrolls has always been are not really the best kind of games for great storytelling. In general, the more freedom a game offers, the harder it is to tell a good story. This doesn't mean freedom isn't a good thing, of course, as with a bit of extra freedom you can have the option to influence the story in certain ways, leading to more replay value, if a game offers absolutely no freedom, the story may be good, but every time you play it's always the same, so you might only want to play it once, if there is more freedom, you'll want to experiment with a number of different options.

Whatever the case, while I like all the games I've played from Bioware, I'm not sure what the Elder Scrolls would become in their hands, they might be able to create a good game, but my doubts are in if it would really be the game I want the Elder Scrolls to be. Would it offer what makes me like the series? Or would it just be something else inserted into the Elder Scrolls world? I wouldn't immediately denounce any Elder Scrolls game made by another developer, but I would have a few doubts about it. Though, if it did happen, it should defaintely be a spinoff like New Vegas, and in the case of New Vegas, Fallout wasn't originally Bethesda's series to begin with, so the situation is slightly different from letting someone else make a game in their own franchise.



I think that goes for pretty much any series that becomes popular, games that no one likes are generally just criticized for a bit and then forgotten, or if they are remembered, they're usually only brought up if a discussion of bad games comes up or to make fun of them, games that are popular on the other hand are the ones that are really burned by those who are not fully satisfied with them. So when you think about it, if people keep flaming your game it may not necessarily be a bad thing, it means people care about it.

In any case, this is a hard question to answer, as no other company has made an Elder Scrolls game, and while other companies have made RPGs which promise a large amount of freedom, none of these are quite the same as the Elder Scrolls, so could another developer pull it off? It's hard to say. On the one hand, it might allow us to say another developer's take on the Elder Scrolls series which is just as appealing as what Bethesda has done with it, and could allow the series to benefit from the strengths of another company, it would also allow said other developer to make the game while Bethesda could focus on other products. On the other hand, said other company might take their own direction

Well, if you do some more thinking, I think Shigeru Miyamoto (hope I spelled his name right) is not only the creator of Zelda and Mario, but of Donky Kong as well. The Donky Kong liscense has been done by Rare (Banjo-Kazooie) before (back then half owned by Nintendo) and Microsoft Games Studios now owns them. So it won't be a first.


2K already have their logo on the North American Oblivion disk. What exactly did they contribute to Oblivion? I don't see their logo on anywhere on the case or on any of Morrowind's disks. Does that mean Bethesda already had liscensed out the ES franchise to someone else when they made Oblivion? Edit: or is their association something as simple as Ubisoft's.


I don't know about 3rd party companies, but if Bethesda had someone else make a TES game, I would like it to be idSoftware. I believe both companies are under ZeniMax, aren't they?

Just for some fun, what would we get if Rockstar made an ES game?

I can wait for Bethesda to make it.

I would actually really love to see Bioware do some kind of Elder Scrolls spinoff game.

As a spinoff, yeah, but not Bioware... that would just be another RPG. Granted I love Bioware but if it was going to be a spinoff it would have to be a different style of game to not just feel like TES:V. An RTS maybe?

but they have, pretty much everyone who was in on making Arena and Daggerfall is gone, well except for Todd who they upgraded from janitor to Dev chief.

You have to start from somewhere. I will take a janitor job to be bigger later. Even if Todd was a janitor, he was still making more money than most people.

Sadly, Troika is long gone now . Their games had a great atmosphere and I was really sad about the fact that their last Vampire game was such a commercial failure. Ok, it had it?s bugs but nevertheless it was a great game. Completely different than the TES games though, so I wouldn?t think that they could have handled that. Piranha Bytes do tend to get to much lost in the details, see Gothic 3.

Yeah, 2K the Publisher helped publish and distribute Oblivion, but nothing development wise.

I guess I was a bit fuzzy on the details, too. I should have made sure of things. See, Irrational Games developed Bioshock, but I forgot that when I was typing and confused it with the additional developer - 2K Marin - who worked on the game to make it operate on the PS3.

Man, oh man, I've wanted this for a long time! Set in the distant past of Tamriel, command vast armies and build up your civilization!
Maybe I would like obsidian to do it (After I see what New Vegas is all about.)
Maybe Rockstar (I dunno about this one)?
How about Paradox, the guys who made Mount and Blade.
I really think that Bethesda needs to either hire some guys from Paradox or just simply steal some of their ideas. I think that, if they had the huge dev team and assets, Paradox could possibly achieve elderscrolls quality open world RPG's. I really enjoyed Mount and Blade's "Total War RPG mash-up" allot.

I'd love to see a game with the factions and complexities and storyline of TES and the dungeons of Tomb Raider. :wub: That would be it for me.

Only Pyranha Bites might do a good TES game (tough it would be bugged as hell).

Bioware is a huge no-no. While I love Bioware and their games, they are specialized in bird-perspective party RPG's. TES is a first-person "Lone Hero" RPG. I don't think they have skills to make a true TES game, just a spin-off whos only connection with TES is Nirn.

Maybe if it was Looking Glass Studios. Oh wait . . .

Honestly, I don't think I would mind if Bethesda pulled an Infinity Ward/Treyarch move and let someone else develop a TES game in-between their in-house releases. It would mean more games in the long-term, which would be fine with me.

Of course, just as the IW's CoDs tend to be better than Treyarch's, I would expect the Bethesda TES games to be of higher quality. And more accurately, it's not just Bethesda, but Todd Howard's team that I would be watching.

if you out it like that, i'd love for somebody to make the eye of argonia with a proper lore backing from gamesas. it would be awesome.

Hmm...

The purist in me wants to suggest that were anyone other than Bethesda to create a TES game that it just wouldn't be worthy of the TES title because it wouldn't have been written by Bethesda.

But that thought provoked, the vast majority of me wants to tell that purist in me to shove it, because as far as I can tell, Bethesda no longer has the heart that made TES great. As near as I can tell, it began having chest pains in TES III: Morrowind, and suffered a massive cardiac arrest with TES IV: Oblivion. So as far as I can see, the Bethesda that I love is dead anyway. Therefore what difference could it possible make?

Besides, Bethesda themselves have made spinoffs of TES before. They're never as good as the main TES titles, seemingly created by splinter factions with only specific what-ifs to tackle. But they happened. So really, would Bethesda allowing other developers to license their canon really be so different than that? I think not.

In fact, the more that I truly ponder the possibilities, the more hope that I can actually find that at least some other developers might find the heart of TES that Bethesda seems to have very much lost, and in turn actually be the ones to bring a love of roleplaying back into TES. I really have a difficult time believing that Bethesda themselves have any such intent to ever do roleplaying seriously again. Not after the slap in the face that was Oblivion.

So yes, I'm all for Bethesda licensing their world to others. It can't be any worse than what Bethesda is doing. And it potentially can be better.

I don't think that I could choose any specific studio or team to work on such projects though, because I'd personally favor it be an indie group, who came to it for the love of Arena and Daggerfall. And any ex-Origin developer who worked on Ultima Underworld would get a thumbs-up in my book. Bringing intellect back to TES would be a wonderful change of pace.

EDIT: Upon further thought, I'd love to see what American McGee could do with some of the concepts prefaced by Oblivion.