With Starfield out of the way and now in the hands of the content delivery team who are said to be on the game for the next ten years- at least until the going gets rough and they decide to abandon the game at year 3 and then pretend they never said 'ten year plan' to begin with- (Bungie flashbacks galore) we can look unto the future. With Todd Howard pretty firmly declaring that he doesn't believe in spin-offs because he believes all those gameplay verticals can fit into a main line Fallout game (which he is horrendously wrong about, by the way. The day a Creation Engine game produces a half-decent stealth experience is the day I eat my hat.) the next title is most definitely going to be that Elder Scrolls VI game that was announced last decade, and with that comes my concerns, once again, that Bethesda are going to drop the bag.
Now to be very clear with you, I would consider myself a Bethesda fan. I think they have been extremely instrumental in establishing an identity to the entire western action RPG genre and have revolutionised the way that many games function as a result. Meaningful RPG visual customisation through the equipping of armour sets, fully immersive simulation worlds to experience loosely guided open worlds that let the curious explore- they wrote the book on all of that. And unlike many others out there, I don't actually believe that Bethesda has at all regressed from what they once were. What I think people are observing but not quite clocking, is the rest of the industry jumping forward by leaps and bounds whilst Bethesda hang around with their tackle out wondering how to proceed.
One manner in which Bethesda has consistently failed to make a splash, for which they absolutely must revise should they wish to have any remote foothold in the current RPG market- is combat. Fallout 4 enjoyed a total revision to the way Fallout 3 and New Vegas played in order to make it a half decent shooter. Starfield doubled down on those improvements to become a mostly decent shooter. But that's different. The path to making good shooter games is mostly linear and very well paved by the leading shooters of the games industry before them. Call of Duty. Destiny. Wolfenstien. There were models for Bethesda to base themselves after and shoot towards aping. Not so much with fantasy hack and slash,
There are dozens of ways to bring such combat to life and it just so happens that Bethesda have tried a few throughout the Elder Scrolls life-cycle... and none have been really all that good. Arena and Daggerfall had an innovate but quickly depreciating click and drag weapon swinging system that aged worse than the Nazi's before the Ark of the Covenant. Morrowind had a 'hit or miss' calculation system which ran in the background and basically made the early game unbearable and simply failed to account for anything late game- being overall useless. And Oblivion and Skyrim just went for simplified wet-noodle slap systems which got the job done, but never felt satisfying to play. But there's no real excuse for experimentation anymore.
As much of a predictable cliché it might feel to read- fantasy melee combat has largely been solved in the modern age and those plaudits belong to the very successful Souls genre. The tight hit-box, swing and dodge/parry/block foundation presented by Demon Souls presents a tactile and dynamic system of combat which has been remixed and iterated on incessantly over the past half decade without growing tired or style. It is a foundation to base a genre off and honestly should probably expand outwardly. Maybe not to the extent of totally ripping the tactical core out of previous tactical party based RPGs- but I suppose that ship has already sailed seeing the gutted out remains of 'Dragon Age: The Vielgaurd'.
Now of course I'm not saying that The Elder Scrolls VI should be a souls-like, absolutely not! But there are fundamental lessons of control that could be built upon from the basis of how those games play- but iteration is definitely key in this discussion. One of the key-most pillars of how Elder Scrolls games is the fantasy of power which Souls-style games actively work to downplay in the way they play and control- so there are certainly some liberties that would need to be taken on Bethesda's end to make a game like this feel as good as it can. And in that vein, I actually might have an idea of what kind of game they could also learn from- although you're gonna have to bare with me for a second as I explain myself.
So the best third person action games for selling into that extreme power fantasy has to be the Devil May Cry games- for the way they present a challenge of combat mastery with a reward of total combat control. I'm not saying that we should be able to literally juggle our enemies around like putty in Elder Scrolls VI, that would be taking it too far- but there's a level of combat complexity present in Devil May Cry that is achieved with precious little controller real estate. Most of the extreme content that each of the Devil May Cry weapons offer are achieved with two buttons and sticks flicks- and the wealth of combat value they add fuel an entire franchise. I don't expect Elder Scrolls VI to rival the deep thought-out complexity of DMC's best- but capturing some hint of that level of intrinsic combat mastery, combined with a more ground Souls-Like basis, would create a unique vision of gameplay that both fits the Elder Scrolls mission statement and evolves so far beyond the basis to shoot this franchise back into the headlines.
Of course I speaking on supposition and dreams here- but in my mind you're really going to need to shoot big to be competitive in the modern world. Bethesda no longer offer the biggest or most detailed open worlds, they no longer offer the most reactive feeling RPG spaces, they no longer achieve unparalleled world simulation and I'm argue they no longer have the benefit of the doubt to flub their way through despite all that. The next Elder Scrolls need to be competitive in real terms, and I somehow don't expect the company to suddenly bridge that gap with world-tier storytelling or graphical aplomb. Something core has gotta give. And that something has to be Bethesda's lacklustre approach to putting the sword in their fantasy player's hands.
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