this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2025
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Elder Scrolls creator Ted Peterson is “glad that people are wanting to break away from” watered-down RPGs as he works on an epic Daggerfall successor (www.videogamer.com)
submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net to c/gaming@beehaw.org
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With the success of massive RPGs like Baldur’s Gate 3 that actually offer player choice again, Peterson is excited to release his game to an audience that does want more again. After a rough period of RPGs where player choice and ingenuity were watered down, there’s now a hunger for more branching paths and player freedom.

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[–] megopie@beehaw.org 14 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

For me, what I like to see in an RPG, is the ability to play a game multiple times and have notably different experiences, both in terms of play-style and narrative. It should make me want to go back and play again to see what I missed or how else I could do it.

The idea of having multiple ways to deal with a quest, and having that impact further story beats in meaningful ways is what I want to see. What i don’t want to see is meaningless scale full of nothing but filler.

I don’t think dagger fall is the best example because much of its size was just procedurally generated landscapes. The ability to actually specialize and complete quests in unique ways, as well as a branching story, is great. Mindlessly massive map, not so much.

[–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

That is one way to make a good RPG, sure. But some of the best RPGs ever made are completely linear (most JRPGs for example).

[–] vonbaronhans@midwest.social 1 points 41 minutes ago

I think JRPGs do focus on choice, but usually more in terms of the gameplay and deep combat systems with weird synergies to discover. Story-wise... yeah definitely more linear.

[–] MaggiWuerze@feddit.org 43 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Acting like it was the players fault for not wanting that, instead of the companies not wanting to spend the money on the needed complexity...

[–] Belgdore@lemm.ee 18 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

It’s companies acting like people who play games are all middle school aged boys that’s the problem.

[–] graff@lemm.ee 13 points 22 hours ago

Considering how a loud minority reacts to anything that they don't like...

[–] addie@feddit.uk 5 points 19 hours ago

I think even when the companies have a bit of money, they tend to go overboard. I think eg. Baldur's Gate 3 is actually so long that it's problematic, I would have been quite happy with it at 2/3rds the length it is. Even worse would be something like Pillars of Eternity 2 - it's great, but it goes on forever and didn't make any money. There's too much of it.

Give us more games like Disco Elysium. Not that long, tonnes of replayability, and more importantly, it's different. Really different. And the "moral choices" actually mean something.

[–] megopie@beehaw.org 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It’s not necessarily even more expensive to develop, it just impossible to do with the management techniques brought in recent years. Techniques brought in with the intention of streamlining personnel management and to make lay offs easier.

[–] MaggiWuerze@feddit.org 4 points 22 hours ago (2 children)

It's added complexity, which costs effort and thus money. The lack of established teams of course does not help

[–] megopie@beehaw.org 2 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago)

It’s a question of longer development time with smaller teams, or short timelines with big teams. A small team working on content in series is more cohesive, but, requires a longer timeline. A big team can do a lot in a short time by making content in parallel, but this necessitates that content be siloed to prevent needing constant revision. A few long quest lines with lots of outcomes, or a bunch independent quests with simple outcomes.

A small team working longer will cost the same as a big team working shorter (generally speaking). But the priority is short timelines, for the sake of chasing trends and packing the latest greatest tech in. This same kind of priority also leads to spectacular failures of long timeline games, like “black flag” or “duke nukem forever “. The issue there is not the long timeline, but the constant changes in priority to chase trends.

[–] samc@feddit.uk 2 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

But you could also make the same argument about graphical fidelity, which has been pushed further and further for decades, greatly swelling the cost of production

[–] MaggiWuerze@feddit.org 1 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Because it is an easy metric and looks good in trailers. Indie games prove again and again, that good games come from good gameplay and not from photo realistic graphics

[–] samc@feddit.uk 4 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

I agree, but my point was that cost isn't a sufficient explanation.

I think I particularly agree with @megopie@beehaw.org: one reason we see photo-realism instead of more stylised graphics is that it is more generic, and thus less dependent on a specific team.

The more artistic/creative your work, the less interchangeable your workers are.

[–] megopie@beehaw.org 1 points 19 hours ago

I hadn’t even thought about preferences for photorealism being a streamlining thing, but it does fit the idea.

I think it’s also a risk aversion thing as well. Few people will complain about a game looking realistic, so it’s very low risk from the point of view of publishers/investors/marketing. Most people will prefer a unique and stylized look that meshes with the game, but investors and marketing teams can’t be sure in any given case, so it’s written off as a risk.

[–] brsrklf@jlai.lu 18 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

Since most of Elder Scrolls nostalgia today is around Morrowind, it's always interesting (and a bit funny) to find people (involved or not) who think the series started to derail with Morrowind.

I am not mocking them at all, I get it, Daggerfall and Morrowind are very different games with a different scale and focus. Daggerfall is also... quite overwhelming, and rather impersonal for 99% of its gameplay. I really don't know what a "modern" Daggerfall would look like.

[–] kurcatovium@lemm.ee 12 points 22 hours ago (3 children)

I can tell you. It would be HUGE absolutely generic open world with AI generated characters and quests, virtually zero human made and interesting quests and gameplay would feel like filling excel spreadsheets. Somewhat like Ubisoft recepe :-D

At least that's what original Daggerfall 's spirit would be. It was at the time where "the biggest" was simply the catchphrase and Daggerfall was exactly that. The biggest. But also very shallow and empty. Sure there were billions of quests but what for? When for one interesting there were dozens of generic ones? Don't get me wrong, it was still a great game at the time, because players weren't as spoiled and something was always better than nothing. At least that's my impression.

[–] WillowBe@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 2 hours ago

I don't think I want AI, or quests generated characters. I already played other RPGs. Build something new please

[–] BigBananaDealer@lemm.ee 9 points 22 hours ago

daggerfall is so messed up that the legitimate strategy to beat the game is go in and out of dungeons and waiting for the quest item to randomly appear next to the front door

[–] brsrklf@jlai.lu 5 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago)

That's honestly what I am worrying it would be, and what I meant by a huge part of the game being "impersonal".

Daggerfall has parts that are fascinating, even long after its time.

Its custom class creator is rather fun. Its magic effect system too... despite some of the most intriguing effects not even working at all. Seriously. You can craft those spells, they just don't do anything.

Its dungeons are intimidating in scale, and the 3D automap is both a feat and almost no help at all.

There are freaking linguistic skills, plural because there are like 8 different languages or so. They are mostly useless, because they just add a slight chance a monster won't attack you, but since you don't know when it works you'll murder them anyway.

And then there's the undistinguishable random quests and the grind.

[–] megopie@beehaw.org 5 points 19 hours ago

I think, at this point, most of the nostalgia is for Skyrim, despite being the newest one in the series, it is nearly 14 years old now and way more people have played it. It had issues, and lost a lot of what was great in Morrowind, but it’s a beacon of quality compared to what came after.

It’s started to impact their success though, starfield has only sold like 3 million compiles so far, compared to the 12.5 million of fallout 4 on launch day. Hell, Morrowind has sold 4 million copies, albeit over 23 years.

It’s probably to late for Bethesda to turn things around, but, it’s a great example of what not to do for other studios and publishers.

[–] HubertManne@moist.catsweat.com 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I dunno. I have nostalgia from the original where I could get unlimited mana from a magic sword for my spells.

[–] brsrklf@jlai.lu 1 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Honestly I have played only a little of Arena (very late, around the time Bethesda started to give it for free on their site). I think the farthest I went was the second staff piece dungeon.

[–] HubertManne@moist.catsweat.com 2 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

yeah its just that the race or class or whatever that did not regenerate mana but could get so much mana from items. I was levitating with a forceshield and blasting things before long right into the end. I was like gene grey or magneto just tearing up the place.

[–] brsrklf@jlai.lu 2 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago)

Oh, kind of like the Sorcerer default class in Daggerfall and the Atronach sign in Morrowind and Oblivion then (and sort of Atronach stone in Skyrim too, though this one is just less regen, not no regen at all).

Yeah, those are fun. You're basically a magic sponge.

[–] warm@kbin.earth 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Well, the illusion of choice mostly.

[–] elfpie@beehaw.org 1 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

That always takes the fun out of games for me. You can do whatever, but there's a correct way of following the story, which is subconsciously grasped by the community and thrown down your throat if you deviate and complain you are having issues.

[–] warm@kbin.earth 1 points 1 hour ago

Yes, it is fine as long as they dont advertise "a huge branching story", when really there's only a handful of endings. If you dont count random game over screens.

BG3 has a lot of dialogue options, but they rarely change the outcome of the story.