Not just that, but even their game studios. Take for example Starfield. Lots of hype, massive letdown. I'm one of many massive Bethesda fans. Starfield absolutely could have had so much more, but HN knows what happens with software projects. Deadlines aren't met, marketing / business depts start signaling that we need it out the door yesterday, and a bunch of things get cut. I have seen on reddit loads of comments about a ton of content being cut out of Starfield, which is ridiculous, Bethesda games are always content rich.
Microsoft is a giant behemoth, it needs to reorg in a way that allows its very distinct pieces to function correctly. I wish Microsoft would let Bethesda have full autonomy.
Bethesda was notorious for releasing products riddled with bugs long before they got acquired by Microsoft. Morrowind has multiple fan patches, so does Oblivion. Fallout 4 used to crash a lot. I don’t think Microsoft as anything to do with their current sorry state.
Riddled with bugs is frankly expected for Bethesda.
Starfield's main problem was the shallow content which is very unlike Bethesda. Skyrim, for all its faults and issues, had so much to discover. As did the previous entries in the series. As did Fallout.
I don’t know. I stopped playing Elder Scrolls games at Oblivion which was significantly more shallow than Morrowind, itself less ambitious than Daggerfall. On the Fallout side, NV was great but not made by Bethesda and 4 is pretty much just a bad FPS with boring paddings in between the shooting.
I think the constant content downgrade has been going on for a long time.
My view is likely very tinted. Skyrim was my first Bethesda game and while I did the play the Oblivian remaster, I never touched Daggerfall.
From my view, assuming the remaster isn't too massively different content wise, the change was more in certain mechanics from Oblivion to Skyrim. Lore and story wise both games have incredible depth.
While I did enjoy Starfield, if found it to be flat. They stretched the resources too thin. Much of the content was too repetitive. It felt like a kids game. Neon, the supposed crime den riddled with drugs and gangs, may as well have been a kids amusement park.
Ultimately, the fact that Starfield came out over a decade later but offered so much less was a let down. Never mind that the game didn't really improve on the underlying mechanics. Modders solved a lot of loading screens in Skyrim decades ago, but Starfield is full of them. It felt dated at release already.
> Lore and story wise [Oblivion and Skyrim] have incredible depth.
As you said, you never played Daggerfall or Morrowind. Just about all of the lore in Oblivion and Skyrim comes from Daggerfall, Redguard, and Morrowind.
As for the stories... sorry, but you're on your own there. Oblivion's was okay, but Skyrim's story was a trainwreck from beginning to end. Of all the parts of Bethesda games, it is the character + story writing that has suffered the most over the years.
I've played their previous games on release date and never encountered that many issues, but Starfield was littered with issues. I think it's gotten worse.
Bethesda has always been known for its abysmal lack of care about quality. Morrowind (2002) is riddled with bugs, a lot of them game breaking. They're all listed on the wiki, each article having several of them, with steps to resolve them using console commands (which you are expected to use if you want to finish the game).
Obviously, but I was responding to OP's claim that Bethesda's games took a dip in the quality department, by underlining that they were always infamous for putting out rushed games riddled with bugs.
I have been moderately interested in Starfield and anticipated it would follow the pattern of other Bethesda endeavours. Which is to say it takes a while post-release for they and their mod community to get it to a state I am at all interested.
No, its bad. Genuinely bad. This was the first Bethesda game I actually found bugs on day 1 for. I've played all their other games on launch and its never been this bad for me. I usually rarely spot bugs, I don't know if I just have the right hardware or what, but it just never happens to me.
The other problem is they did a major update, which broke a ton of mods. Then with their own mod store, they made it so only paid mods are considered "savefile safe" for enabling of achievements, which means every other mod I find that isn't a paid mod has a descriptiong along the lines of "I AM NO LONGER MAINTAINING THIS DUE TO BETHESDA WANTING TO PAYWALL SIMPLE FREE MODS JUST TO LET YOU SAVE WITHOUT ACHIEVEMENTS" or something like that, I've seen a few completely different mod authors just abandone ship completely.
This is probably their worst goof ever. I'm genuinely angered enough that if the next Elder Scrolls flops I may have to write off one of my all-time favorite game development studios.
I love Bethesda, but they're falling off real hard, and the only difference that could be affecting that is Microsoft in my eyes.
Just think. Starfield could have been a Game of the Year game. It was not.
It also only has one single DLC.
I love the game, its just not looking like it will ever meet its potential. I read on reddit a commend that I agree with, the only thing that could save Starfield now is a "Directors Cut" release.
Skyrim on day one came out with a game breaking bug in the main quest, and it crashed a lot too. Starfield's problem is that it's a very boring procgen hell.
They cut out a ton of content, they should have left most of it in. There's more problems beyond just procedural generation. All the companions hold the same views. Even the bounty hunting group feels incomplete.
Microsoft is a giant behemoth, it needs to reorg in a way that allows its very distinct pieces to function correctly. I wish Microsoft would let Bethesda have full autonomy.