If you’re a game developer in the year 2024, the lure of Baldur’s Gate 3 must be irresistible. The biggest hit of the last 12 months, and maybe a lot longer, the DnD-inspired Larian RPG has potentially changed the entire mainstream – everyone must be looking at BG3 and wondering how they can replicate its success. With Elder Scrolls 6 still on the boil, however, one former Starfield, Skyrim, and Fallout developer explains how copying Baldur’s Gate 3 is not a straightforward shortcut to success. On the contrary, Larian’s approach to RPG design might not suit Bethesda’s game-making principles.
The Elder Scrolls 6 release date is still a ways away and Bethesda, arguably, has a little soul searching to do in the wake of Starfield and its Shattered Space DLC. Given the mixed response to its space RPG, the temptation must exist to upend its approaches to character design, world building, and combat. In combination with the runaway success of Baldur’s Gate 3, you can appreciate why The Ministry of Todd may be tempted to try and swim in Larian’s wake. But according to one Bethesda veteran, it’s not that simple. BG3 may have thrust stats and dice rolls back into vogue, but those kinds of systems are not universal, and might not suit the spirit of games like The Elder Scrolls 6.
“In the days of Daggerfall, everybody was trying to replicate the tabletop experience, which means that you were rules heavy,” former Bethesda developer Bruce Nesmith tells Videogamer. “Our character description was large and, I would argue, unwieldy, and as time moved forward, that was less and less of interest to the audience. They didn’t want to have outrageously complex character sheets, and I was actually one who aggressively pushed for streamlining.
“When you look at something like Baldur’s Gate 3, I think that’s a very different animal. They [Larian] had a very specific charge. They were taking Dungeons and Dragons fifth edition and putting it onto a computer game. So it was intentionally looking backwards, intentionally seeing the old tabletop presentation with the die rolls and all of that. It was…reflecting back to the good old days from the point of view of the people who used to play those kinds of role-playing games back then or did now to give them that joy buzzer. So I think Baldur’s Gate 3 is actually an exception to that.”
Nesmith, whose credits include Morrowind, The Elder Scrolls Oblivion, Fallout 3, and Fallout 4, departed Bethesda in 2021. Speaking about the studio’s work, he says that Bethesda’s games could have fewer bugs and “more polish.” In terms of the influence of Baldur’s Gate 3, however, Nesmith doesn’t believe that Bethesda will dramatically alter its approach to design.
“I don’t think [the success of Baldur’s Gate 3] necessarily presages a complete change back to more numbers and more fiddly character sheets and things like that,” Nesmith says. “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. 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.”
Putting aside stat sheets and character attributes, does Bethesda need to change how it designs and builds RPGs? The most recent Starfield Steam figures suggest so, but by the time Elder Scrolls 6 rolls around, tastes, trends, and the entire videogaming culture might look very different, so we’ll have to see.
In the meantime, try some of the other best fantasy games, or maybe the best turn-based RPGs available right now.
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