Ryuu96 said:
shikamaru317 said:
- They worked a long time on Starfield because a. they remade Creation Engine as Creation Engine 2, b. it was a new IP and new IP's always take longer, and c. it was the largest game they have ever made in virtually every metric, as I mentioned above.
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It's so damn tiring to have to explain for the 10,000 time that games today do not take the same amount of time to develop than they did 10 frigging years ago, Lol. Developers try to tell gamers this, journalists try to tell gamers this, they don't listen, they expect games to be shit out like a factory line in 2-3 years.
Fact is that MOST games these days take at least 4-5 years to develop now. New IPs take even longer, reboots are essentially the same as New IPs in many cases and take around the same amount of time. Sequels are about 4-5 years. Everything else is longer. Zero Dawn = 6 Years. Forbidden West = 5 Years. Tears of the Kingdom = 6 Years.
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It's also worth noting that Starfield wasn't the only game they were working on from late 2015 to now, it's not like they were solely working on Starfield for nearly 8 years straight. There would have been a team working on Fallout 4 DLC until August 2016 when Nuka World released. The first 3 years that Starfield was in active development, from Holiday 2015 to Holiday 2018, probably at least 60% of Bethesda's developers were on Fallout 76. Alot of 76 was done by Battlecry Studios/Bethesda Game Studios Austin, but there were developers from the main studio in Bethesda Maryland who worked on Fallout 76 as well. Bethesda Game Studios Montreal meanwhile was working on Elder Scrolls Blades from their opening in 2015 until it's release in May 2020, so they wouldn't have joined Starfield development until 2020.
It's a big part of why I am skeptical of claims that we won't see Elder Scrolls 6 until like 2030. Starfield's long development was a unique case:
- Multiple Fallout 4 DLC's when Starfield was in early development
- New IP which take longer to build
- New build of the Creation engine which took like 2 years to make
- Development resources split with Fallout 76 and Elder Scrolls Blade's during much of it's development
- Huge game with tons of content and 1000+ planets and moons
Elder Scrolls 6 development should go much faster than Starfield honestly
- Starfield seems to only have one DLC planned, instead of multiple like Fallout 4, which is why the premium edition only has a single DLC instead of a whole season pass of DLC's, so the full team will likely be moving on to TES 6 sooner than most past Bethesda games.
- It's a sequel, not a new IP
- Creation Engine 2 is already made, they just need to make some light upgrades to it during the development of TES 6
- TES 6 will likely be a smaller scale game than Starfield, map size will likely be 2x bigger than Skyrim at most instead of 1000+ planets and moons, hours of content will probably be less than Starfield, less gameplay systems to deal with since they don't have to do ground and space combat, Elder Scrolls games have fewer skills than Starfield, etc.
- Less other projects to split development resources, Fallout 76 is entirely handled by Bethesda Austin and Dallas these days, Montreal studio (which is up to 115 people now) seems to assist the main studio in Maryland now instead of working on a new mobile game like Blades, and the main studio alone has over 200 people now I believe. They are likely going to continue expanding these studios over the next few years as well.
- TES 6 seemed to have actual development going on way back in 2019, we saw a behind the scenes video that Bethesda released in 2019 where they were photogrammetry scanning real world desert rock formations for TES 6's rumored Hammerfell setting, as well as doing voice acting and photogrammetry scanning with Skyrim Grandma Shirley Curry to turn her into a Companion for TES 6. Those aren't typical pre-production tasks, pre-production is usually things like story treatments, concept art for locations and characters, storyboarding, gameplay system planning, etc., not making in-engine art assets and recording voice acting and mo-cap. That suggests they've had a small team doing actual development tasks on TES 6 since at least 2019, with typical pre-production tasks having been done even earlier, soon after Skyrim released. Probably not a particularly big team, I'd be shocked if they've had more than 25 on TES 6 this whole time, but even 25 people pounding out actual development tasks for 4 years straight could maybe already have TES 6 at 10% completion.
I'm expecting we'll see TES 6 by Holiday 2028 personally, 5 years of development should be plenty for TES 6.
Last edited by shikamaru317 - on 09 September 2023
