Entirely possible, I'm just not banking on it. It's easy for problems to come up during testing that can set the whole thing back a bit, and if that happens it's entirely possible that they'll delay it several months rather than release it after the holiday rush (and honestly, I'm pretty sure that's exactly what happened with Oblivion).

Statistics and graphs require more then a single input, and more then 2 points of data to draw any sort of coloration. Give you only mention Oblivion's release, it is impossible to draw any useful conclusion from this as we are only presented with a single point of information.

Let me know when you have 2 more games in which they failed to generally meet their release by Bethesda, then I will be more inclined to believe you.

I don't flame people so I won't flame you. I will say that they just announced the release date last week and made a deal with GI to reveal what is in store within their magazine. You make statements like this, and I consider your perception of reality to be without value. You may be a wonderful and brilliant person, but a post with this sheer lack of substance makes me take any other posts made by you with the sole understanding that you view the world with these goggles and I therefore must immediately disregard your viewpoint. What I would prefer is to understand your viewpoints rather then base them on this particular preemptive strike against reason.

Save room on that portal hop for me guys!

To the OP, the idea ever strike you that Bethesda actually waited until the right time to announce the game? When they actually are very far in development?
Give them some credit. This isn't Valve we're talking about.

Oh sure, the only way to guarantee an 11/11/11 release date would be to in fact threaten to kill everyone that works at Bethesda if that date was in fact missed. It's a release date, and those can change (and in Bethesda's case often do). On the other hand, I do think that Bethesda has been awfully specific with this release date (compared to other releases). I think there's a good chance that it'll be released on 11/11/11, but no, I'm not risking life or limb on that date.

Arena was delayed from the holiday season in 1993 to March of 1994. Morrowind was delayed from the holiday season in 2001 to May of 2002. Oblivion, from holidays 2005 to March in 2006. Daggerfall would have been delayed as well if they weren't rushing to get it on the market (IIRC they were trying to beat Betrayal in Antara, which ironically ended up such a massive failure that it couldn't have offered them any real competition anyways). That's three out of four, and the one that made release was released in such a completely broken and unfinished state that it was impossible to actually beat it when it launched and that a huge number of its features are still half implemented and broken even after a number of patches.

EDIT: In general, this isn't a series that's seen any of its numbered releases actually being finished on time, with only one of those entries being released when it was scheduled to and being released in an entirely unfinished state. That should really be more than enough data to lean people towards expecting a delay.

Rabish, you're smarter than this. We both know that there's a pretty big difference between the Bethesda that produced Arena and Daggerfall and the one that's making Skyrim. Those games were released 16 (Arena) and 14 (Daggerfall) years ago. Heck, it's pretty different than the cash starved company that developed Morrowind.

If you really want to talk about Bethesda's track record, let's look at the recent history: Fallout 3 and Oblivion. Now that's a 50-50 shot, but since Fallout 3 was more recent, you can probably bump that up a bit anyways, so let's say 70-30 in favor of an on time release, agreeable?

In terms of the development teams, certainly. In terms of management (particularly on the Zenimax side), with that often being the group making these kinds of decisions, not quite so much. Also, I wouldn't call pre-Morrowind Bethesda "cash-starved" - they weren't as big as they are now, but they did have a fairly successful publishing business and their games tended to sell at least up to expectations. Given all that, "cash-starved" seems like a pretty massive stretch. And besides that, quite a few team members that had been around from the Morrowind days are still there, and the kinds of philosophy informing technology and game design decisions that they have now seems to have started there. It doesn't really make any sense at all to exclude Morrowind when you take all of that into account (and this is all ignoring the fact that a "cash-starved" developer has far, FAR more reason not to delay, meaning that if they actually were that would be more of a detriment to your point than a support for it), and I'd say that even excluding Arena and Daggerfall entirely is a rather dubious move.

I'll admit that I probably shouldn't have left out Fallout 3 (it's a different franchise, but not really a different situation), but even if we include that and exclude Arena and Daggerfall (again, not something I'm entirely comfortable with) that leaves us with one of three releases actually hitting retail on time. And no, it's not a situation where you can slide it so that Fallout 3 carries more weight - Fallout 3 is a single game, and like Echonite said in the post I was originally responding to you can't assume a trend based on one data point. It certainly makes sense to give Fallout 3's timely release more weight than the delay for Arena and the accident that was Daggerfall's release (more weight mind - not so much weight that they are excluded entirely), but it doesn't make any sense to consider it any more significant than the delays for Morrowind and Oblivion.

EDIT: In general, you seem to be futzing with the numbers to support the prediction that they'll release on time just a bit too much, particularly where you're saying that Fallout 3's release should be given more than twice the weight of Oblivion's when looking at this solely because it's more recent.

EDIT: Note: I know Zenimax came in later, but it was founded at least partly by Bethesda's own founder and almost certainly included employees from the Bethesda end of things. The main point to take away there is that even though pretty much every key member involved in the actual development of the first two games is gone, the upper management hasn't necessarily seen a major shift. Thought I should clarify, because I'm guessing that's going to be a point of conflict otherwise.

EDIT: I really need to stop adding to this post... just thought that it might make sense to point out that Fallout 3's also a pretty atypical release for them, given that the gap in technology between Oblivion and FO3 isn't nearly what it's been for any other pair of games in the series. Morrowind involved a move to an entirely new middleware rendering engine, Oblivion involved a jump to a rather extensively different version of that engine, and Skyrim is now involving the creation of an entirely new gameplay and rendering engine by Bethesda themselves. Fallout 3, on the other hand, is based more on a somewhat tweaked version of Oblivion's engine than a significantly different or more advanced one, and a fairly large number of the systems it uses are lifted directly from Oblivion. All of that would almost certainly have an impact on their ability to meet deadlines for the game, and makes the idea of considering it a more important indicator of Skyrim's potential delay than Oblivion even more questionable.

If you think that it is the management, specifically ZeniMax, that causes the release date problems then we ought to include Fallout: New Vegas as an on time release. After all, Bethesda was publishing it. Their managers were definitely sitting at the table when the release date was announced. We should also exclude Arena and Daggerfall, considering Bethesda wasn't 'aquired' by ZeniMax until 1999.

Honestly, even if you want to include Morrowind's late release, you can explain that away by saying that the team responsible for Morrowind had never attempt something on that scale before. Similarly, the Oblivion delay can be explained by attempting to rush it so it would be a 360 launch title. Of course, I wouldn't agree that the Oblivion delay was caused by such an attempt.

EDIT: As for ZeniMax coming in later, remember, the key guy in Bethesda's early history was Christopher Weaver, and he's gone.

On Zenimax's formation in 1999, see my edits in my last post and sorry for not being a little clearer on that end in the original post. On New Vegas, I generally try to divide games that are developed internally from games developed externally - the actual developers have significantly more input and the publisher has significantly more involvement when the game is being worked on internally, which means that it's easier for a developer to push for a delay of an unfinished game (something that, given New Vegas's state at release, probably should have happened for that game as well).


But the fact that you're searching for ways to "explain away" late releases is specifically the problem I'm having with your post. You shouldn't try to explain them away, you should consider them and then consider things like the scale of the project involved when thinking about just how much weight they should be given in an anolysis, not try to look for reasons that you can outright exclude inconvenient data. And again, the explanation you're using with Morrowind hurts your stance more than it helps it - if Morrowind was delayed because they hadn't attempted something on that scale before, then why wouldn't you expect the same with Skyrim, where the current team is making a new engine for their first time (this being the overall studio's first new engine to be developed in-house since the mid-1990s, when creation of that sort of thing would have been wildly different)? That seems to be some rather significantly new ground for them, so it doesn't seem to make much sense at all to claim that Morrowind's delay can be "explained away" because of the scale of that project when the scale of this one is arguably larger in development terms.


He's almost certainly not the only person who shifted from Bethesda to Zenimax in the early days, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if their corporate policy on internally developed games hasn't seen significant changes over that time. Their policy on releases in particular seems to have seen some revision specifically as a result of Daggerfall's release, and that especially is something that I'd expect is still at least partially intact.

EDIT: This is a rather complex sort of thing to be looking at in general. That's why it doesn't make sense to discard any of the data that we have without seriously considering it. I don't necessarily think that the delays involved with the last two games in the series are going to result in a delay with this one (I think the new engine is going to be more of a factor than anything, though I do expect a delay), but the apparent trend they have for delaying their games is still entirely worth looking at.

Bethesda's been working on this for two years now, and they still have 11 months left. I think they'll get it.

Lets see they've been working on this for about two years and they probably have been brainstorming ideas for Skyrim since after Oblivion was Released in 2006. They've had 5 yrs to come up with stuff that they've wanted to put into an Elder Scrolls game and they in the last 2 years have been working on Skyrim. I think they will make the release date with no problems as they still have another 11 months to make any changes.

I thought Todd said it was 3 to 5 years?

"Full production" wouldn't have started until after Fallout 3 shipped, at which point a majority of the studio's resources would have shifted to this game. That doesn't mean no work was done on it before then, but it does mean that work would have picked up significantly afterwards.

The difference is Skyrim has a street date. The others did not. I would actually be shocked if it is NOT released on 11/11/11.

Let's be honest Rabish, when Obsidian releases a game that shouldn't have been delayed for a few more months it'll be huge news.



There was a large gap between Daggerfall and Morrowind's releases. My point was that the knowledge base of skills needed to develop a large scale RPG had to be reinvented at Bethesda. This probably caused delays. With Skyrim, there isn't a need to do that. The team has been working on large scale RPGs non-stop since Morrowind's development. You can't pretend that they shouldn't have gotten better at estimating their time budget at this point. I just think it is easier to build a better wheel than to build the first wheel.



Yes, but 14 years is a long time. There has got to be a good bit of turn over in that time.



Oh, I agree, and the new engine is the big unknown in this situation. I wouldn't be astounded if the game is delayed. On the other hand, the fact that they've been so specific in the release date, makes me think they're pretty confident of making it. Plus I think that at this point in development any huge problems with the engine would have surfaced.

Skyrim has already been delayed a year.
Here's a short article from 2008.
http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2008/10/bethesda-wants/
"At the moment we’ve got Fallout 3 for this year and potentially there’s a new Elder Scrolls title in 2010,"

You are definitely NOT right...

And you definitely can't spell definitely...

ok maybe i mod can sticky some facts for people...cus there seems to be ALOT of them...that havent been paying as much attention over the past week as some of us.

fact 1: skyrim was being designed almost immediately after they finished OB.

fact 2: BGS currently employs around 100 people.

fact 3: they purposely kept the game a secret, so that when they announced it, they could give a definite release date. and flood the market with a bombshell of info.(which will be in the next GI issue)

fact 4: well im out of facts now. but these are the ones ive noticed, that people just arent getting.

edit: forgot a fact

fact 5: there will be dragons in the game. but the extent is currently unknown.

They had 3 years to work on it with 70 people, then another 2 with 100. I think they'll make it.

This is the biggest/sorriest troll thread I've seen in here so far.

Then when was Fallout 3's full production period? Where did you get that first detail from? Todd mentioned hiring about 30 people after Fallout 3 was released. He didn't say Fallout 3's team consisted of 30 people. Real production on the game was still likely very limited between early 2006 and late 2008, especially with some people needing to work on Shivering Isles. The tech people who made the engine are people I could picture working on TES V's engine very soon after Oblivion's completion, or perhaps right at that time, in addition with some writers and concept artists, but I think that may have been it until at least mid 2008. Still, Bethesda has a lot of people working on this new project, more people than they had to work on past Elder Scrolls games by a very significant amount.

Dont you remember like 2 years ago when Bethesda was all like "We are working on somthing big thats not fallout!" Dont you get what that was?

Um..no. Right after that "announcement" there was a general uproar. Did you notice the "potentially" in there? Where is the definite date that got delayed?

I guess you missed the "announcement" that happened the year after that, when people thought that the ES series was over. Todd was quoted at Quakecon in 2009 Pete pointed out that wasn't a direct quote. http://bethblog.com/index.php/2009/08/17/clarifying-about-next-elder-scrolls-game-mmo-etc/



In 2009, ES:V wasn't "in the near future". Nothing delayed if nothing is due.

So basically there was never an official announcement until now. And they also announced the specific release date, which they never do until they know they'll make the date.

They have been working on Skyrim much longer than you think. It just wasn't announced.