This Tuesday, we’re bringing you a special episode of State of Play running for more than 40 minutes, focusing on games created in Japan and across Asia, alongside a few other exciting updates.
This Tuesday, we’re bringing you a special episode of State of Play running for more than 40 minutes, focusing on games created in Japan and across Asia, alongside a few other exciting updates.
There is, because we expect more fidelity now than we did in 2011, and Skyrim was built on some existing bones. When you’re trying to make a game like that in Unreal that you haven’t done in that engine before, it’s going to be smaller (if you’re smart). Baldur’s Gate 3 didn’t get to be that big without building on Original Sin 2, and the same can be said for Elden Ring; perhaps without a pandemic in the middle, those games might have even been made in more reasonable time frames than 5 or 6 years.
Comparing scope of Skyrim, Oblivion, and Morrowind, there is very little difference. Really the only difference is an added feature here or there per iteration, and graphics. There is no reason a studio today couldn’t make something like Morrowind, as it was developed by like, 50 people. Unless the employees and management colossally screw up. No, modern game failures are not ONLY the fault of management.
Right, there is little difference between them because they had the prior game in the series to build off of, but don’t just gloss over “and graphics”. The fidelity that we expect today is why you can’t just make the next Morrowind with 50 people, because people expect it to be better than Morrowind now that we’re 20 years removed from it. A smaller team than that made Dread Delusion; a larger one made Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon. From those, if they’re fortunate enough to have financial success, they can build on it just like Bethesda built on Morrowind’s bones. What Obsidian made with a similar team was The Outer Worlds, which kept the fidelity up but the scope small, and I think it was the right decision, because otherwise, you end up taking 7 years per game like Kingdom Come. Those are great games, but it took 15 years to get two of them, and the first one was rough.