That would be you then, you don't care about the series. If you did, you would care about Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind and Oblivion. But you don't, there's 1/4th of the series that you don't like at all, and write plenty of posts a day to spread your hate about the 1/4th of the series. I don't see how that's "care".


Because the minority aren't enough sales. And games are business and always been business. Back in the 90s a group of 10 people could make a game in a year, now 50+ people work several years on one title, the development costs have increased a lot, and catering a small audience isn't enough anymore, especially not now when gaming is mainstream and hold a vastly larger audience.

No one has said your opinions were stupid or less valid. They may be tired of seeing them repeated in a lot of different threads though. And I am not trying to be in any way mean here, but has it occurred to you that your perspective on Bethesda as a developer is hopelessly skewed at this point? You've spent a lot of time vigorously putting the smack down on Oblivion and/or Bethesda - to what end? You haven't said anything I did not already read in the OB forums in mid-2006, or read in the TES V speculation threads for the past two years.

I am quite sure that Bethesda is aware of the opinions and feelings of this group of fans. We can all hope that our desired changes/additions have been heard and adapted, but Bethesda has projects of huge scope and there are simply a lot more considerations to factor in. I will say that a lot of what I saw in FO3 made me very optimistic for TESV.

I like how he thinks "Casuel gamers" stay casuel.
I was once what could be considered "casuel",Then I found oblivion and a year afterword joined the forums.
The forums led me to arena,which I didn't like much.
Then to daggerfall which I absolutely loved.
Casuel gamers become fans.

The main problem is the shift in resources from content development to interface design. Oblivion was okay, but I could have just as much fun playing any of a number of other titles... while Daggerfall and Morrowind were something special. I'll be watching TESV closely, possibly waiting for the price to go down before I give it a try, and may not be buying it all... all based on the strength of TESIV. Oblivion I went out and got as soon as I could, based on the strength of TESIII.

Game design is both an art AND a business. Neglect the business end, and you go out of business and can't make more games. Neglect the art end of it, however, and you erode your brand, hurting the business and eventually reaching the same fate. And I'm not sure there's room in the industry for another Electronic Arts or Sony Online Entertainment.

I don't think Todd is a malevolent psycho who wants to flush TES down the drain and make an FPS, I think he, and Bethesda as a whole, do care about their fans, we have the CSes, the freeware games, and a community manager who freaking gets things done, to put it mildly. I just think a lot of the time, they struggle to work out what it really is that their older fans want, and often get it wrong, in their haste to fix problems, create new ones.

I haven't played Fallout 3 yet, so I don't know how much they've fixed the Oblivion problems, but the TES fanbase isn't the same as the Fallout one, although Shivering Isles makes me somewhat optimistic.

Arena had modest sales - but enough to warrant a sequel. Daggerfall was a commercial disaster if I recall, only worsened by how buggy it was on release. Definitely one of those "a failure on release, a legacy a decade later" type games.

It's just that Bethesda didn't really become a major well-known company until Morrowind, maybe Redguard. They had a skeleton development team back then, and nowhere near as much money, but they tried - they were really ambitious, and bit off more than they could chew. Despite this, their games came out with major appeal to the RPG fanbase anyway, and the company was able to survive.

I've been told though, that Bethesda is too well-known now. They can't just desert their hundreds of Game of the Year awards and legions of console gamers - they can't take risks anymore, like they could when they were a smaller company.

I am relatively optimistic that TES V will at least be on par with Morrowind, maybe a little worse. I don't care - if it's an improvement over Oblivion, if I can play the game and tell that Bethesda's really been trying to redeem themselves, that makes me happy. Each TES game has a radically different degree of complexity, and I don't think there will ever be a consistency. But if they can improve, I will be happy.

Why has Starcraft II got so much hype? Because there is a belief that it can sell 10 million, like the first Starcraft did. The Witcher on PC, sold 5 million, STALKER on PC sold 6.5 million. Plenty of 360 only or PS3 only games would be happy with 6.5 million sales! Many many 360 or PS3 exclusives sell under 3 million. Atari were happy with 2.5 million sales on 360, PS3 AND PC for their Ghostbusters game, for example!

So it's a fallacy that hardcoe games wouldn't sell, and given that none of the games mentioned above cost more than $20 million to bring to market,with the Witcher costing $8 million,give hardcoe PC gamers what they want and a PC game can sell profitably! It just that since the suits moved in and took over publishers, throwing out the designers, starting in about 2005, publishers have felt they needed to 'play safe'. Proportionally, games companies today are no more profitable than game companies of the mid 90's,for while today they can sell 5 million of a 360, PS3 and PC title, they spend up to $40 million to do this. In the mid 90's hit PC titles only sold 2-3 million, but costs were under $10 million - you do the math!

The PC only titles sound more profitable. Also, I have said this on other threads, I do care for Oblivion, it's a great game I'm just looking for mods that add some missing roleplaying aspects that it lacked to it. (Like choices and though it's not a roleplaying aspect I like unique landscapes.) The thing is though that interview really does make me feel like Todd dosn't really care about the views of the original fans and hardcoe RPGers. It's fine to care about the views of others but they keep removing things from the series and Oblivion really was dumbed down compared to Morrowind. Maybe TES V will be better but if it is like Oblivion I really won't be trusting of Bethesda.

Also, people have short memories. Bethesda went bankrupt because they decided to go 'mainstream' once before. Remember, after Daggerfall and between Battlespire and Redguard, Bethesda released Drag Racing games and sports games and SkyNet and games that did much worse in sales than the inbetween games of Battlespire and Redguard and Morrowind.

In fact companies that stayed true to their RPG series, like the Wizardry, Ultima and Might and Magic series lasted longer without bankruptcy. Bethesda would have been better off using their engines to produce non fantasy RPG's alongside their Elder Scrolls games. No one, to this day, for example, has done an Elder Scrolls style cowboy game. It's easy to think of a Western type main story. Say your wife and children are kidnapped to force you, the sheriff to release a prisoner. You can think of dozens of side quests like cattle rustling, bank and train robberies, feuds, range wars and on and on. Same goes for detective thrillers, sci-fi, historic (non fantasy), etc. They had the engines, they had the reputation and I think if they had taken this route they would still be their own masters.

In general though, when we think of the dumber more streamlined games we get in this new 'multiformat' market we are in today, we forget we have been here before. Sales in shooters were declining, with simpler and simpler 'Quake' type games that had you just killing everything is sight. gamers were getting fed up with this, so when Half Life, a much more sophisticated shooter came along, it was snapped up and resurrected the genre.

It was the same with roleplaying games, they were getting more 'action' orientated with only hack'n'slash type games like Diablo and even simpler fantasy action/strategy rpg's and a declining RPG market until the much deeper,more sophisticated, more 'grown up' Baldur's Gate. This, again, resurrected the RPG genre.

We are back with a declining PC market due to streamlined, simpler console conversion games. 'Sophistication', in general, is declining. RTS's with no base building, no supply lines and no resources. Games called RPG's that by any standards of the 90's would be 'action-adventures', games like Jade Empire and Mass Effect. We now have developers like Obsidian (programmer's who worked on Fallout and KOTOR II) releasing a game called Alpha Protocol and describing it as a '25 hour RPG' - a 25 hour RPG?! To any long time roleplayer, that is an oxymoron!

We see that it's the more sophisticated 'mature' games that sell on PC. Games like STALKER, the Total War games, The Witcher and Sins of a Solar Empire; games like these move more units than games like Crysis, Dead Space, Mirror's Edge and Far Cry 2. Then you have the Deus Ex selling 5 times more than the 'multiformat' Deus Ex 2. We Have the 'strategy removed' Dawn of War II selling currently half the units of Dawn of War.

So the signs are out there. The next company to release the next 'Half Life' or 'Baldur's Gate', or in general starts releasing grown up games again will reap the benefit, and if that doesn't happen, because of the multiformat market we find ourselves in now, then we can expect an ongoing decline not only in PC gaming, but video gaming in general.

Excellent writeup - these undulating trends in the viability of a genre have happened before. Let us only hope that, when the next "Golden Age" occurs for these sophisticated games, that Bethesda follows it.

The fact of the matter is, it costs tremendous amounts of money to develop and produce a video game, and Bethesda wouldn't be able to stay in business if they were cater to the minority. Yes, their games have been dumbed down, and yes, it does svck, but just be glad they care enough to release (very) powerful content creation tools so that we can change the game to suit our liking.

With that said, I actually liked playing Oblivion, although it was glaringly obvious how flawed their level scaling system was from the get-go (easily fixed by getting a mod). I hope they take TES V in a different direction, but either way I'll probably still wind up buying it.



I just wanted to throw in that while I can't find any sales statistics for Daggerfall, I think calling it a "commercial disaster" is way too strong. When I bought my copy, the box was covered with awards, and most reviews I read threw heaps of praise on the game while noting its incomplete and buggy nature. Besides, if it was a commercial failure, they wouldn't have gone on to create Battlespire (which definitely did NOT do as well as Daggerfall did, critically or commercially).

The difference between Daggerfall and Morrowind is that PC gaming hadn't really caught up to the mainstream around the time Daggerfall was released, and Morrowind was also released on the Xbox, furthering its exposure. Installing a game in DOS and installing in Windows XP are a far cry from one another, as we all know, and Morrowind being a Windows-based program certainly increased its accessibility.

Thank you, but I think the 50 billion dollar question is IF the next Golden Age arrives. The last Golden Age came along from the decline of PC gaming to the resurrection of PC gaming. It did not happen in our current 'multiformat' market where 75% of AAA mainstream games on PC are now console conversions.

We are just beginning to see 360 and PS3 gamers complaining about how the Wii has forced their 'hardcoe' games to get dumbed down Console Gamers now argue about how so many of them are over 25 and yet more and more games are dumbed down for the teenage market. This sort of conversation began to take place in PC gaming in around 2005. If it takes another 5 years for console game sales to be 48% lower, like AAA mainstream PC games have gone down since 2005, it will be too late.

The problem is, it will take gamers to change this situation, emailing publishers and telling why they liked their game, or didn't buy their game. If publisher's regularly got 10,000 emails from gamers all giving similar reasons why the did not buy the company's latest game, the company would listen. But go onto any forum, Gamespot, IGN, 1Up etc and post a message saying their is the slightest problem in PC or video gaming, and you will be flamed off the forum!

So, personally, when I look at the dumbness of so many gamers, the ineptitude of so many publishers and the downright supine gaming media, I am not confident at all that this 'Golden Age' will return.

Subconsciously, I think many gamers know this, and this is the reason retro gaming is the fasting growing genre in gaming at the moment. We have the success of Steam, which sells mostly retro and indie titles (indie market growth is based on retro gaming too, in that graphics are not so great and gameplay and originality is more important, just like back in the day!). We also have the success of GOG.com, the Microsoft 360 Live retro downloads and Sony's Arcade retro download service. We also have the huge success in the retro ebay gaming section. Follow that up with bigger and bigger take up's of free game releases, like Daggerfall, and the 100,000's that download retro game remakes like the King Quest remakes and the Freespace updates. And of course, last but not least, we now know there have been over TEN MILLION DOSbox downloads!

With all this interest in retro gaming, I think gamer are subconsciously shouting out for more sophisticated games, like game of old,. that have gameplay, not graphics at their heart and treat gamers as the advlts thy are.

So if we can get gamers to wake up, publishers to listen and the media to take the industry to task over it,then there is a chance. But for all that to happen? Iam not going to hold my breath, I am afraid.

I think its amusing that Bethesda delivers, and people complain about it. There were complaints that combat was boring in Morrowind, how it made no sense that it seemed you were hitting the NPC but there was no damage, then we complain about the action focused combat in Oblivion. I remember there were complaints about the lack of detail back in the days of daggerfall, with all the random dungeons and such. Then they add uniqueness to things in Morrowind but people complain the gameworld is too small when compared to Daggerfall. Its a never ending circle of complaints.

And I complain that people complain.. guess I am the worse of all lol

Everything you said about Daggerfall and Morrowind came from the media - the comments on Oblivion came from gamers! That's a subtle difference! It is the media, more than anybody else, that has brought us to the state we're at. They always complained about the sophisticated games (probably because they took longer to review!) and were always demanding smaller,more straightforward games! They are also totally hypocritical,with there love of a feature, say in, Medieval II Total War, and when it is dropped in Empire Total War, they now say how 'bothersome' that previous feature was! The media complained not one jot about Deus Ex 2, or Dawn of War II, it was gamers that did that. So there is all the difference in the world between what the media complain about and what gamers complain about. The media is there to make excuses for the industry it reports on,so that you continue to buy games. The media is no longer there to support gamers at all, it has it's own agenda..

All of the awards received by the "highly acclaimed" Oblivion come from idiotic reviewers on mainstream sites (such as Gamespot). Reviewers who never a TES game in their life and are comparing Oblivion to their idea of "fun" rather than whether it is a wholesome experience in general. Most reviewers seemed to be biased casual gamers anyway, always talking about the graphics and whatnot. In the end, all these "Game of the Year" awards are little more than an excuse to force someone to buy your game more.

I guess that it does make a bit more sense than biased reviewers giving Oblivion a 2 because it doesn't live up to the expectations of a Daggerfall player. However, they certainly aren't a valid source to go by. If only we had more people like Yahtzee who openly bashed games and compared them to their predecessors...

Great interview and review! Here is my favorite paragraph:

"However, US Patent and Trademark Office records show that in 2006 Zenimax trademarked the name "Skyrim" for "Computer and video game user instruction manuals; magazines, books, and pamphlets concerning video games; computer and video game strategy guides" and "Clothing, namely shirts, t-shirts, sweatshirts, sweaters, jackets; headgear, namely, headwear," sparking rumors throughout the internet."

This also confirms my theory after finding the two notes hidden in Oblivion that give directions well into Skyrim and warn of "Were-bears"

I CAN'T WAIT !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks Matt!

Well, when Daggerfall was released, in-game hints as well as dev interviews pointed pretty clearly that the next game would be set on Summerset Isle, continuing the story of Morgiah and the King of Worms. Obviously never happened though.

Sometimes companies trademark names like that ahead of time "just in case". So without an official announcement you -really- can't be sure. I certainly wouldn't mind playing a TES game in Skyrim, though.

uh, actually that was mixed from my opinions and some of the stuff I remember reading back in the forums here and in Andel Crodo old website. I didn't even read Morrowind reviews, I was too addicted to Daggerfall to think twice about buying it.. same about Oblivion.

My opinions are my own.

There's actual an http://www.elderscrolls.com/tenth_anniv/tenth_anniv-morrowind.htm on Bethesda's 10th/15h anniversary site where they describe these early design concepts for Morrowind:

"Morrowind was originally conceived during development of Daggerfall. It was to be called Tribunal and set in Summerset Isle."