One of my earliest videos was a critique on modern day Bethesda Game Studios. I fought through my allergies and recorded a nasally retrospective on how Bethesda had lost a diehard fan- me.

And one of the most interesting parts of that video is I made roughly nine months before Starfield released. At the time of my video, there was still an air of hope surrounding the game. It was going to be BGS’ first big offering after being acquired by Microsoft. It had the optimism usually given to a new IP and setting from a proven studio. Just look at Metaphor: ReFantazio; part of the hype for that game was seeing a beloved group of developers tackle a new setting. Personally, I was never excited or optimistic for Starfield once I heard procedural generational would be a massive focus of the game. But what did the fans and critics say?

We all know where this story takes us…

Starfield current has over 100,000 reviews from players on Steam, and it sits at a “Mixed” status. On aggregator sites like Metacritic and Opencritic, the critic reviews have the game sitting at mid-80’s. And while these should be taken with a grain of salt, the fan reviews on Metacritic are in the mid 60’s. While many would argue that numeric reviews are useless, I think they are usually (not always) good indicators.

This is Bethesda Game Studios we’re talking about; creators of some of the most legendary video games of all time. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

To make matters even worse, Starfield: Shattered Space was promised to be an answer to fan outcry. Todd Howard himself compared the DLC to Far Harbor pre-release. To put that into context, Far Harbor is usually considered the greatest DLC by BGS. And this time around, it wasn’t just the fans who were disappointed by Starfield, the critics also disliked Shattered Space. And to make matters worse, the lead writer of Shattered Space, Emil Pagliarulo, who has been writing for Bethesda since Morrowind, confirmed that many designers of Shattered Space have been with Bethesda since Morrowind as well.

So this isn’t just a case of veterans leaving a studio to work on other things. It’s not like BGS is now composed of a bunch of rookies. This is a case of those very veterans losing their magic touch.

I’m left with two questions. Let’s start with the first:

Who cares about Elder Scrolls VI?

My personal conspiracy theory is that The Elder Scrolls VI was announced simply because for the first time in a while, Bethesda was in some hot water.

Elder Scrolls Online was launched in 2014, and wasn’t received very well until it started improving over the next few years. Fallout 4 launched in 2015 and was generally enjoyed, but criticized for its lack of RPG mechanics when compared to its predecessors. And then we all know what happened when Fallout 76 launched a few months after TESVI announcement. Perhaps they were reacting to some of their heat, and also preparing for the incoming backlash over Fallout 76.

It’s hard to believe that the “trailer” came seven years after Skyrim launched. And here we are now 13 years later with nothing else to show for it. We have reports that Elder Scrolls VI will be built on the same engine as Starfield. The engine was one of many complaints people had with Starfield. Todd Howard hasn’t exactly instilled in me any confidence that this game will come out anytime soon. And we have to wonder, if this game is being worked on now, is it planned to be a cross-platform game? Is it supposed to run on Xbox Series S/X and the next gen Xbox? It’d be much like how Halo Infinite launched on both Xbox One and the Series consoles. It’s been well known that the Xbox Series S has been a speed bump for developers. While it’s a pro-consumer option, it’s hard for developers to make their games feel next generation when they have to hold back their ideas for a weaker machine.

I hate to say it, but I just don’t care about Elder Scrolls VI. Especially if it looks anything like Starfield and is planned for a release on Series S. I feel like Bethesda has foolishly assumed they’re in a Rockstar-like position. People have been craving GTA 6 for more than a decade now. But the difference between Rockstar and Bethesda is that in between GTA 5 and GTA 6, they released one of the greatest games of all time, Red Dead Redemption 2. And not only that, but their support on GTA online has generally been well received.