The answer to the headline is obvious, right? At E3 back in 2018, Bethesda offered a road map for their next three games (and, when all is said and done, likely its next 10 years). First, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Fallout 76, which launched that year. Then 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Starfield, which is finally set to release this September. And then, far off in the future, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Elder Scrolls 6. No developer has been as cle🀅ar about what comes next as Bethesda Game Studios.
But that’s not what I mean. At some point developers reach a point where it isn’t possible to go any bigger than their last game, and that presents a tough choice. Take the team behind 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, for instance. The Smash games have consistently scaled up with each entry. The first game on 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Nintendo 64 had 12 playable characters and the most recent game, on Switch, reached 89 by the time it added its last fighter. The sheer size of Smash Ultimate raises questions about where the team can even🎃🦹 go from here. How do you top a roster that huge? Do you even try?
Bethesda will be in a similar position if Starfield is a success. The game looks like the logical endpoint of everything the studio has done up till now. It has huge cities, extreme customization for everything from your character to your base to your spaceship, and over 1,000 planets to explore. We've gone from, "See that mountain? You can climb it." to "See that moon? You can fly to it and build a city" in a matter of years. So, where does Bethesda go next? How can it possibly top the size and scale of Starfield when it eventually returns to 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Elder Scrolls?
It's the same question I've been wondering while playing 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Le♉gꦑend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Its predecessor, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Breath of the Wild, was a major expansion for the franchise, offering a map that 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Twilight Princess, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Wind Waker, and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Ocarina of Time could fit neatly within with plenty of room to spare. But, it was only one tier, and Tears of the Kingdom used that lack of physical depth as an opportunity for growth, building up into the sky where islands now float, and down into the Depths where dimly lit adventures await. But, Eiji Aonuma has said that Breath of the Wild established a 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:new format for the series that will keep going after Tears of the Kingdom. Where is there left to go, though? Will the next Zelda take us to space? Down to the fires of hell? Will Link drill through the center of the earth and find the United States on the other side? I don't know, but Nintendo seems intent on exploring that question.
We know that the literal answer to where Bethesda will go next is: back to Tamriel. But, how will the world of The Elder Scrolls measure up to Starfield? After having an entire galaxy to explore will Bethesda fans be content with just another continent? Some fans have complained about Obsidian's next game, Avowed, being 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:closer in size to T♓he Outer Worlds than Skyrim, and it's true that a subset of players will always interpret smaller as worse and bigger as better.
But, at some point, we'll reach a breaking point, which is why I think developers should start taking this moment of peak map size as an opportunity to scale back. Ubisoft is pausing from making seemingly infinite 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Assassin's Creed games to build something more compact and focused with Mirage and it seems like a good path forward for other triple-A developers, too. Don't try to compete with your largest games. Go back to the drawing board and build something smaller and richer.