It’s incredible to think that Bethesda is able to produce a varied collection of high-quality games spanning various genres, year in and year out.
This year, while there was nothing as incredibly exciting as a new Elder Scrolls or Fallout entry announced, we did get a great list of titles across multiple platforms to look forward to, as well new content for recent releases.
The show opened up with an animated video set in BethesdaLand. The presentation was injected full of humour and tongue-in-cheek moments that helped keep an upbeat rhythm to events. There’s probably plenty of small little easter eggs and moments we may have missed upon a live viewing, so it’ll be interesting to go back and see if there’s anything quirky or funny happening in the background of the animation segments (Thomas the Tank Engine making an appearance during the talk about Skyrim mods for example!).
So what did we see?
The first segment was a montage of footage across Bethesda’s recent titles, before showcasing the developers and their children, talking about what it means to work at Bethesda developing video games. Pete Hines walks on stage, and the show begins.
Doom VFR
We already knew this was in the works, but this is the first time we’ve seen it in action. After seeing some articles written over the last year about how Bethesda is approaching the challenge of locomotion in such a fast-paced game, it seems a mix of slow-motion and movement-coordinate blending is the solution. It looks like it’ll work, and a few extra gameplay mechanics were added in to enable some VR interactions with robot hands to flip switches etc. Looks exciting!
Fallout 4 VR
Again, something we already knew about, but good to see working out well. This looks different to Doom VFR, in the sense that the locomotion works differently. Whereas Doom VFR uses a teleporting solution to zip around the world quickly, Fallout 4 VR seems to take on traditional movement controls. This makes sense, as Fallout 4 is a slower paced game than Doom, so it can get away with regular locomotion for its VR format.
Elder Scrolls Online: Morrowind
The Elder Scrolls Online seems to be going stronger since it went free-to-play. A Morrowind expansion means that fans who remain nostalgic over the Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, can finally satiate their hunger to revisit the world they fell in love with on the PC and original Xbox all those years ago. Also confirmed were two new pieces of content called Horns of the Reach, and Clockwork City.
Creation Club
Bethesda unveiled its new ecosystem called Creation Club, which enables third party developers and skilled community developers to produce new pieces of content for Creation engine supported titles, that players can buy using an in-house points system. Nothing was revealed on how much the points cost during the event, but more news will likely follow post-presentation. Bethesda worked with Valve to try and produce a paid-system for Skyrim mods, but fell flat on its face upon receiving a negative reception from players. This is likely a second approach towards a more agreeable, and better moderated system. All of the extra content will work officially with every supported game, including existing and upcoming DLC. Your mods will work with the game in an official sense, and not cause any compatibility issues.
Elder Scrolls Legends: Heroes Of Skyrim Expansion
An expansion for the Elder Scrolls card game.
Elder Scrolls IV: Skyrim for Nintendo Switch
A title we’ve already been aware of, but some details were shared that were quite interesting. Amiibo support is included with the game, where the trailer shows a Link figure being pressed against the Switch, and dropped a Breath of The Wild themed chest in Skyrim for the player to open. The player is able to wear Link’s BOTW outfit, as well as wield the Master Sword. Motion controls were also supported, much in the same sense as the Wii controllers operated (i.e waving the controller to swing a sword, pulling the controller back to knock an arrow etc.).
