Bethesda are very well known for their great approach to open-world storytelling and their ability to truly get their players immersed. Their two most popular franchises, “Fallout” and “The Elder Scrolls” are based heavily on these ideas, sharing the same core gameplay style, and we’ve seen various great additions to the formula over the years that have made it even more polished and refined.
Now that “Fallout 4” has been out for a while, fans of the company have started to dissect the game and discuss all of its components in the context of whether or not they would make a suitable addition to the next “Elder Scrolls” title. There are indeed many features of “Fallout 4” which would work very well if implemented in the fantasy franchise, and most notably, people seem to be quite impressed by the quality of combat in the last game.
This has actually been a constant source of complaints for Bethesda’s fans, as even though the company is quite good in coming up with exciting stories for their games, their combat has traditionally always felt clumsy and unrefined. “Fallout 4” changed that by making gunplay much more dynamic and alive, truly making the player feel like they are fighting their battles. Of course, not everyone was completely happy with this, as some claimed that it made the game feel too much like a shooter with RPG elements, instead of the other way around.
But according to many, it would be a winning move for Bethesda to carry over this style of combat into the next “Elder Scrolls” game in order to make it feel more flexible and immersive. While the premise of “The Elder Scrolls” is somewhat less conductive to exciting shooter mechanics, the next game could still benefit from giving players more precise control over their combat.
This would work especially well if the game comes with more expansive mechanics to complement the main combat, such as new classes of weapons and new types of magic. Allowing the player to develop their character in a completely new direction could be useful too, although the previous games in the series already did a great job at that. Let’s not forget that the lore of “The Elder Scrolls” is very rich and full of opportunities to tell an interesting story that puts the player in a new type of environment.
On the other hand, there are also arguments within the community that Bethesda shouldn’t directly copy everything from the latest “Fallout” in the new “Elder Scrolls”, as some parts of the game were met less favorably than others. For example, the settlement building component got responses that were mixed at best, and many players actually found the system frustrating after a certain point. The constant barrage of related quests was seen as something that got old quickly, and many players ended up completely ignoring the feature because of the way it was implemented. And while building up a settlement could definitely have its place in “The Elder Scrolls”, Bethesda should definitely reevaluate their approach to this feature before implementing it again.
Various other changes that were introduced with “Fallout 4” have been the subject of discussions within the community, such as the game’s new skill system and character progression. Some saw it as a logical continuation of the system from the previous games, but for many others it was an overly simplified system that lacked some of the core components of the game’s RPG side.