Elder Scrolls 6 won't return to "fiddly stat sheets" due to Baldur's Gate 3's success, says Skyrim lead: "Through Skyrim, Bethesda has wanted to have the game get out of its own way"
Oct. 18, 2024Bruce Nesmith says Todd Howard is “a big proponent of the interface vanishing if you’re not doing something that needs it to be visible”
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Former Bethesda dev Bruce Nemith doesn’t seeThe Elder Scrolls 6ditching Skyrim’s minimalist UI and going back to the RPG series' early days of “fiddly character sheets” despite the popularity of more technical games like Baldur’s Gate 3.
Skyrim made a big shift away from the traditional Dungeons and Dragons-based RPG format when it overhauled and in some cases straight up abandoned many of the Elder Scrolls series' core mechanics, most notably its leveling and attributes systems. Looking at the trajectory of RPGs, Baldur’s Gate 3 is something of a reversion back to classic tabletop mechanics, and although it was an indisputable and gargantuan success, Nesmith doesn’t reckon Bethesda will take any massive cues.
“I don’t think [Baldur’s Gate 3’s success] necessarily presages a complete change over back to more numbers and more fiddly character sheets and things like that,” Nesmith toldVideoGamer. “Whether or not the rest of the industry will follow suit, I don’t know. I’m not smart enough to say that, but I think that through Skyrim, Bethesda has wanted to have the game get out of its own way.
“You see that everywhere in Skyrim,” he continues. “Todd [Howard] is a big proponent of the interface vanishing if you’re not doing something that needs it to be visible. So all you see is the world. That’s it. You just see the world.”
He’s also been pretty vocal about his time at Bethesda and specifically his relationship with Howard, recently revealing thatHoward would sometimes work on “two dozen” projects at once and saying he’s the face of Bethesda partly because he’s “incredibly photogenic”.
Even more recently,he admitted “Bethesda games could have a higher degree of polish”, but some jank “could be forgiven” because of how much you can do in the RPGs.
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After scoring a degree in English from ASU, I worked as a copy editor while freelancing for places like SFX Magazine, Screen Rant, Game Revolution, and MMORPG on the side. Now, as GamesRadar’s west coast Staff Writer, I’m responsible for managing the site’s western regional executive branch, AKA my apartment, and writing about whatever horror game I’m too afraid to finish.
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