When You Fail To Capture Magic Again

I read an article about former Bethesda developer who left the studio in 2023 and it made me think about the future of Elder Scrolls. I don't personally have high hopes for Elder Scrolls 6 anymore due to the fact that so many core people have left now. I have seen this happen before. You make a successful game, later people leave the studio for various reasons, and quality of a sequel drops. 

2 people don't always think alike. If you weren't around when vision was born, it's harder to understand it or make it happen. One example would be Bugbear Entertainment and their game series FlatOut. Two different studios made third and fourth game and they both flopped (especially FlatOut 3...). Meanwhile Bugbear made Wreckfest and fans loved it, return to the roots. 

Another example is Postal. Postal 4 is mixed bag. Some like it, some don't. The fact is that people who were behind Postal 2 left the studio and it's about 90% new people. But then again they did good job with Paradise Lost DLC so I don't know. 

Of course there are some examples of new people making game series more successful. Bethesda actually did this. They bought rights to Fallout and made Fallout 3, which made the series gain new fans. But Fallout 76 onward, they lost the plot. 

There are other reasons for Bethesda series flopping of course, it's not just old developers leaving. But I think it's one of the biggest reasons why sequel of a game would drop in quality. Like I said, two people don't always share the same vision for a project unless they're working on it from the start. 

Anyway, I just wanted to share some thoughts that this news article gave me. Developing games is hard, and it requires lot of luck, patience and skill to do right. While I don't believe Elder Scrolls 6 will be success like Skyrim was, I wish the current team behind it lot of luck in delivering a fun, good RPG game. 

Let's hope I'm wrong about this.