And there are few hype masters out there better at the game than Bethesda, the masters behind the Fallout series and the Elder Scrolls.
While multiplayer extravaganza Fallout 76 stole the show, for the most part, the brief teaser for the Elder Scrolls VI was enough to send the crowd into a tizzy.
That’s for good reason – as one of the largest franchises on the planet, the Elder Scrolls series is often cited for its depth, replayability, and narrative. Though the Elder Scrolls Online serves a large and eager fan base of Elder Scrolls players dying for constant content, the real draw is in the open-world games like Skyrim and Oblivion that draw players in and drain the hours of the day away in the process.
Not willing to take away thunder from their upcoming experiment in the Fallout universe, Bethesda has merely admonished fans to remain patient when it comes to the next Elder Scrolls title. That’s all well and good but probably harder said than done. After all, Skyrim came out all the way back in 2011 and, even with fresh coats of paint, the title is starting to show its age.
Moreover, gamers are eager to see the next installment in the Elder Scrolls series of games because they are the quintessential single-player experiences. In a world increasingly filled with multiplayer titles and online-only worlds, the Elder Scrolls VI will stand out as a decidedly single-player experience. Bethesda has often reaffirmed their commitment to making the best single player games out there, and the Elder Scrolls series is often regarded among those titles. Whether or not Bethesda can pull it off again is less a question than when they will decide to pull it off again. Let’s face it – online titles are hot and the success of the Elder Scrolls Online has demonstrated that the games can exist outside of their massive (and labor-intensive) single-player guises.
But Skyrim was a huge success for the company, selling well on nearly every platform for which it was released meaning there’s definitely an economic argument to be made for Bethesda’s releasing another Elder Scrolls mainline game. The real test, many analysts think, comes this fall when the company experiments with the online world that is Fallout 76. Eschewing NPCs and traditional quest lines, Fallout 76 promises an entirely online experience that will be both novel and compelling. Needless to say, if the developer can get it working in a way that gamers and fans enjoy then we could possibly see some type of multiplayer implementation in the next Elder Scrolls game. We won’t know this, though, until Fallout 76 stands or falls on its own two feet this fall 2018. One thing is abundantly clear: Fans of Bethesda have a lot to look forward to this fall in terms of game releases.