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The Elder Scrolls VI is easily one of the industry’s most anticipated games.
With that anticipation comes a horde of expectant fans all with the highest of expectations.
The question is, is it possible for The Elder Scrolls VI to live up to the hype?
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I’m not sure if it can, even if it’s a fantastic game. You need look no further than Starfield.
Maybe this is controversial on my part, but I found Starfield to be on par with Bethesda’s strongest pre-existing releases.
It was perhaps overly hyped in its marketing with the 1,000 explorable planets and emphasis on being the company’s first new IP in 25 years but everything you can find in Skyrim or Fallout 4, you can pretty much find in Starfield - all set within a more ambitious wider world.
The issue is that, sometimes, such tentpole releases can be so bogged down by notions of expectation that we don’t really ever see them for what they truly are.
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What does that mean for The Elder Scrolls VI? One Bethesda veteran, like me, is rather cynical about the matter.
Take a look at The Elder Scrolls VI’s reveal trailer.
Former Bethesda designer Bruce Nesmith recently sat down to talk with Kiwi Talkz explaining that while he thinks The Elder Scrolls VI will be “an amazing game”, it’s one that will find it “almost impossible” to live up to player expectations.
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"[The] Elder Scrolls VI is undoubtedly going to be an amazing game, but it's going to be compared to all the previous games that Bethesda made. Just like every studio's games are going to be compared to their previous products,” he explained.
“Their expectations are going to be almost impossible to meet,” he says of the game’s fans, adding that “marketing departments just put their head in their hands and just weep" in such instances.
Nesmith touched upon how games scoring less than 95 on Metacritic are deemed a “failure” which I think we can all agree is a nonsensical notion we all need to move on from.
You need look no further than Reddit to already see those expectations in action.
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Some are tempered. “As long as it is like Skyrim but a little more, I'm happy,” wrote SirZooalot.
“Don't wait 10 [plus] years between installments of a franchise and people might not have such high expectations of you, Bethesda,” said Different-set-7022.
I have great faith that The Elder Scrolls VI will be great too, but I wouldn’t be surprised if its launch is bogged down by the usual noise.
Topics: The Elder Scrolls, The Elder Scrolls 6, Bethesda