Space Elevators! - the spaceship is a basically a loading screen between planets?
Of all the things they haven’t told us, how the spaceship works is probably the biggest one. The teaser implies you fly the ship yourself, but the budget friendly conservative choice would be to make the ship a fast travel hub where you select destinations from a menu.
I think that’s a little unfair. Everyone was playing it then, which inevitably lead to memes and common refrains from the throng of us that were playing and enjoying it. Skyrim’s initial appeal was all on it’s own presentation. It was and still is a beautiful open world RPG, like the icing on the cake after Morrowind and Oblivion. The first time I descended into a dungeon with fog and lighting effects I remember getting a shiver of excitement that lasted until I finished the game. The memes came just a bit later, but I’ve never met anyone who said, “I played Skyrim to see what all the hoopla was about taking an arrow to the knee.”
To me the mark of a good release is when you hear people taking personal time off just to play it. Like whole vacations just to immerse themselves into a game. That isn’t just restricted to RPGs but for sure I remember a TON of Skyrim days off being taken where I work.
I had a fairly smooth experience with Skyrim, so beyond ‘an arrow to the knee!’ AI repeating lines, I also don’t agree with that theory that memes helped Skyrim. I remember EVERYONE playing Skyrim when it got out, that popularity created the memes, not the other way around.
I guess to what @Calelari is saying, the memes didn’t HURT it’s appeal, but I don’t think that’s what drove the appeal at all. Within a week of release I remember reading, “GOTY,” from people posting about it.
I’m more thinking the memes getting the game noticed outside the usual Elder Scrolls following.
But mostly I wanted to do a Skyrim meme, but in space.
And each of those games (mostly) had its own thing going for it. So that if “Skyrim in Space” is just that (or close to it), there will still be a place for it today because it’s NOT Elden Ring.
I play the Souls games to get that particular brand of gameplay/storytelling. It doesn’t take away my appreciation for Bethesda’s type of games (warts and all).
And I agree with @Gordon_Cameron:
“The idea that RPGs have improved by leaps and bounds since Skyrim is news to me.”
I mean, I don’t recall Cyperpunk 2077 being praised as groundbreaking as far as gameplay is concerned.
Are you talking about the inventory system? Maybe I’ve just gotten used to it over the the years but I have zero issues with it. I can bring up a piece of gear, see how it looks, see how it compares to what I’ve currently got going on. No fuss, no muss.
I suppose a ‘mark as junk’ option would be nice, but whatever.
I think maybe it’s about not having any unique or worthwhile LOOT.
Which I don’t disagree with. That is one thing Bethesda could improve. You get to the end of a long dungeon only to find 25 gold coins, a health potion, and some shitty sword. There was hardly ever a point where I got excited finding a new weapon or armor piece in Skyrim.
Those cosmonauts from Hammerfell?!?? They’ve got CURVED gauss rilfes. Curved. Rifles.
If they want this game to be a success they’ll just have to make it easy to create X-rated mods.
We’ll finally get some of that Arcturian poontang.
I don’t really want Elder Scrolls derived games to go for the endless gear churn that’s standard in current loot games, just endless grinding for a gun that does 458 DPS instead of the old one that only does 446.
While I agree that most of the loot in Bethesda games isn’t exciting I rather like it. In the end I feel that my character’s skills make the real difference which feels more epic than a continual loot treadmill. Plus the few items that really do matter feel important.
The “Magic” in games like Skyrim for me is that you, as a player can find your place in the world.
You might be the hero and stop the end game crisis, or maybe your the master thief who robs everyone blind, or perhaps an assassin, or maybe just a wandering adventurer / mage seeing what there is to see.
How many other games do that? Other than elder scrolls games, I can’t think of any. Everyone thrusts you into the designated role and while you may have some freedom to run around a bit, the main plot of the story the character is on is fairly rigid. You only have a few side quests to distract you before you are back on the main plot again. There is nothing else to do in these games.
Not so with Skyrim and other ES titles. It is very easy to forget what your supposed to be doing. I wish more people would make games like this. I am so tired of Skyrim, but there is nothing else to play that is like that.
Elder Scrolls might do it the best in a more modern gen open-world land format but there are other implementations.
Mount & Blade comes to mind as does any space trader/raider/hero sandbox.
Ultima Online is really STILL the dream of this with other players though holy crap 1997.
The main quest is often the worst part of Bethesda games, I almost think they’d be better games if that was excised entirely and they just dropped you into the world with no overarching direction.
I don’t mind them putting in main quests as it really guides those who need that. But I’ve always thought all the side quests were where it’s at, notably the different guild quests, some of the gear quests, the ones for panthons, divines and daedra, etc.
Skyrim had a number of these that were/are fantastic. Granted, these were some of the more scripted and on-rails things you actually did in game, but they were still great.
One of the things I loved about Skyrim is that it had two concurrent main questlines - the main questline, and the Stormcloaks questline. Both of those have support from the guild questlines (in particular the latter one, where you really uncover information about the uprising). That kind of depth and interaction was absent in Oblivion (though present in Morrowind). I’m hoping they push forward with that mentality in Starfield.
For all the naysayers about story in Bethesda titles, I generally think they have really strong narratives - but they present them really, really poorly. The whole “You’re a fake Nerevarine that will serve a political purpose holy shit you may be the real Nerevarine” thing from Morrowind is awesome, but most of it is tucked away and not thrown in your face. That’s a great story, but they don’t draw your attention to it.
Now I’m on a work list. lol.
That being said, is this the weapon the Army was touting not long ago? It let them snap the barrel to the side along with the ability to view around a corner if I recall correctly.