The Elder Scrolls 6 Is In A 'Playable State' - Luke Reacts

4 times the loading screens, 16 times the recycled assets, all of this just works.

Remember, “playable” to Todd Howard is 10-15 fps on low settings.

By Bethesda standards, this seems like horrible news.

My expectations are extremely low. They haven't made a good game since Skyrim and all their games since have seemed like a Disney version of Bethesda instead of the dark games in messed up worlds they made in the past.

Guess that Starfield roadmap went straight to the trash LOL

Them saying they have a playable build sounds like they are using the same game engine.

The fact that Todd Howard said Starfield was his pet dream project he’s always wanted to do.. speaks volumes! I’m terrified for elder scrolls 6.

The announcement sounds like a “Hey! Don’t forget us please! Over here!👋 “

Tbh I have zero faith in it being a good game. I wish this wasn't the case.

"It's in a playable state" = "Please investors, don't sell your stocks yet!"

After Starflop you know they are fast tracking ES6.

Lmao technically Starfield is playable. The question is...do you really want to?

The issues with starfield go far beyond just the creation engine.

Their definition of playable may not be the same as ours

Just goes to show, when they brought out that cinematic all those years ago, it was ALL they had.

You know 3-4 years ago I would've been unbelievably excited for Elder Scrolls 6. But with the trajectory Bethesda seems to be taking, I have a hard time believing they are going to deliver. I hope I'm wrong. I really do, but my expectations are extremely low. Maybe that will end up being a good thing.

Games are in a 'Playable State' like a month or two into development.

Im a 3D artist, iv worked in Unreal, Unity, CryEngine, and spent countless hours in the Creation engine. I am NOT claiming to know everything about game development! I constantly see people blaming the creation engine for the short comings of BGS and it simply isn't the case. Outside of a few engine level bugs that they could fix if they bothered, its fine, in fact its tailored to the type of games they make save for Starfield, they just shouldn't have tried to make a space game with it. CDPR went to Unreal because the red engine is hard to work with and not because it lacks power or ability conversely the Creation engine is probably the easiest engine iv ever worked with. Game engines are not made of steel, they can be changed/updated, if BGS was to go to Unreal Id expect their game would look ~20% better, perform about the same or worse, have the same amount of bugs and we almost certainly wouldn't get a level editor for modding.

I don't know. Todd Howard's interviews in lead up to Starfield were weird. He seems like a nice guy but he just seemed off... either he's delusional or he knew Starfield sucked and was trying to put on a brave face. The institutional arrogance of expecting (unpaid) modders to fix your game and make it fun is outrageous.

I’m so scared for this game to come out now after starfield. Starfield looked and played awful. No improvements in their system, design, mechanics or gameplay since oblivion. Other studios are outpacing Bethesda so much. I would be fine with subpar graphics by today’s standards but what worries me is that story telling, quests, combat, leveling up, exploring might be awful. Starfield was a huge huge step backwards for them and they said they were dying to make this game for 20 years and it was a passion project so if that was their passion project I can only imagine how ES6 will be as they don’t really want to make it just feel obligated to do it.

I will not be purchasing ES6 on release.

Starfield's in a playable state too. It's nothing to get excited about.

“Playable state” defines every single game by Bethesda after release

If only they spend last decade working on this. Jesus

My expectations are really low for the next installments and not as excited as I thought I would be

I have such low expectations, but at the same time, if they don't blow me away, im not wasting my time on it.
You hear me Bethesda "take your best shot." im rooting for you.

Are they using the same engine with ES6? I wouldn't get too excited, unless you're stoked for more skyrim.

They have bad writers. They clearly haven’t had a heartfelt moment where they’ve decided to change direction. I expect more slop/laziness.
I just hope the mages guild quest line isn’t as bad as the college of winterhold.

I am SHOCKED! I thought Bethesda HATED making games

Wow so it's already the most polished Bethesda game 5 years before release that's wild

They messed Starfield up so much that I actually don't care about ES6. They clearly can not deliver anymore.

After Starfield… yeah, the hype train looks more like a Clown Car.

It’s chilling news. My heart sinks like it did when I heard “a thousand worlds to explore “.

Instead of building a ship, you'll be building a horse!

Bethesa's "playable" is very different from what a normal person might consider playable. Remember, they also released Skyrim in THAT state, so...

IDK man. Bethesda spam one button combat and fetch storylines are getting boring. TES story and lore is interesting(since it's something they made not take and corrupt like fallout) but they keep retconning it with TES Online. Lastly a lot of us are getting rather tired of Bethesda. They're simply a lazy studio so expect the bare minimum.

I think the engine really wasn't suitable for an outer space adventure, Skyrim has already shown that an earlier version of the engine works fine for mostly one big open landscape all set in one place though

If it's not at the level of Fallout: New Vegas, I could care less at this point. I would like to see choices and consequences, be able to kill important characters such as quest givers or main plot characters and the outcome tailors to your choices, real perk progression and I don't mean "10% extra damage this, or 30% extra that", that's boring and uninspiring. Being able to side with factions and not every single one in one playthrough because they want us to experience everything in one play-through. If they're just gonna take 15+ years to release games, it should have lots of replay-ability in terms of being able to have distinct builds per play-through, seeing different endings, trying out different factions and such. There's so much nitty gritty that Fallout New Vegas has that Bethesda refuses to pull off because they don't want the "casual player" to get lost and or confused.

If they were serious about this game it would be far from a playable state. All that means(playable state) is that they’re still using their ancient engine, they probably built the world, dropped some new assets such as foliage, sky box, textures and called it a day.

Skyrim 6 just works

"developers can work with the creation engine quickly" oh really? The last teaser trailer for elder scrolls 6 was 6 years ago... it cant be like starefield again its not 2011 anymore they need to improve everything, remove as many loading screens as possible use a better game engine.

So when they say “Playable state” they mean you can walk 2 inches without falling through the map? Also I think fans of CD Project Red shouldn’t let them off the hook for Cyberpunk because then they’ll be under the idea that they can fuck up so royally and think “Uh they’ll let us get away with it if we fix it later.”

I'm excited for that Mystery Medieval Rockstar game that leaked 4 years ago haha

I still remember a comment calling Starfield “Loadfield”

My expectations are rock bottom

You just know it’s made in the creation engine. Brace yourselves for the next instalment of loading simulator.

I don't even have expectations

Honestly if they just dropped Starfield and moved on to Elder Scrolls 6, I would have no complaints on that. Its something they should have done that with Fallout 76. The downside though is I'm worried that they will rush it due to it being such a long and anticipated wait. They might be in a losing battle either way because if they take their time, they need to update a lot of their outdated tools to catch up to games nowadays, before and/or during development, if they want to be at the top like they used to. If they release it too early though, they won't have enough time to update their outdated tools, and at best, we will get a good game but one that feels way older than it really is and at worst we will get another Starfield, though since it at least takes place in the Elder Scrolls setting and not a generic and uninspired Sci Fi setting, it should automatically be better than Starfield, at least on paper, regardless on if the writing, gameplay, quests, etc, still suck.

If you want to understand the direction for TES6 look at the character screen(s) in Oblivion then look at the "character screen(s)" in Skyrim. Tells you everything you need to know.

Not even released games are in a playable state. Not Starfield, not Dragons Dogma 2, no f*cking game is in a playable state these days. ES6 is definitely not.

My game is in a playable state. That doesn't mean anyone should play it in the state it's in. It just means you can make inputs that do something in the game lmao.

I just hope they completely switch their focus on HAND CRAFTED and HAND PLACES world, locations and quests, and stop with the procedurally generated stuff... because that's where they exceed, that's what was so special about Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim,
In Skyrim for example besides the main story quest line there were hand made side quests for all the guilds and factions (College of Winterhold, The Companions, Dark Brotherhood, Imperial Army, Stormcloaks, Thieves Guild, Bard's College of Solitude, Dawnguard, Volkihar Clan, Deidra quests, Black Books quests).
What I want is one big map that's completely hand made and filled to the brim with "good" NPC's, wildlife, points of interest, immersion, soundtrack, cities, towns, villages, bandit camps, caves, forts, forests (since its located in High Rock/ Hammerfell there my not be forests), open land fields ect. that focuses on quality...
Id even accept a barely modified Skyrim level of combat, It really isn't that important to me, I mean obviously I would love if it was a massive Improvement over Skyrim in every way in all areas of Melee combat, Archery, Magic casting and progression tree, but what It really comes down to for me is to experience a new adventure in the incredible world of Tamriel that I've grown to love as a kid...
edit* And to get rid of the fucking loading screens...

How many loading screens on that playable demo?

Oh God, imagine if they rush Elder Scrolls 6 and its even worse than we expect.

Don't judge an engine just by its graphics fidelity though.
For a good game you also need the tools to design the mechanics and systems of the game, and the quests.
I don't know how much of that the Unreal Engine gives developers, but the Creation Engine has these tools tuned exactly to how Bethesda is used to them and wants them.
That is probably more important to them than the graphics side of the equation.

I don't like that every studio is moving to unreal, games on unreal end up looking very samey. That being said Bethesda needs to make some major upgrades for elder scrolls to impress and go beyond what skyrim did.

Creation engine's flaws are what make it beautiful!

BGS has greater than 450 people so having a small team working on the next project would make perfect sense. That and what a developer calls playable and what we call playable are miles apart.
I do think they need to move up to a better engine. They keep bolting on pieces to try and force it to be what they need and it is clear that CE is not up to the task.

When I read "it's in a playable state" before Starfield, I got excited to see what they were cooking. After Starfield my first thought is "this game is doomed".

I think we need to analyze what is the bar for the quality of each aspect of a fantasy RPG/action-adventure game that ESVI will have to reach to not only be successful but rescue Bethesda's reputation, at least in part. If we say the bar is at The Witcher 3 and Baldur's Gate 3, then anything less than those will inevitably disappoint.
Granted, I'm still excited for the game, especially for all the new lore we'll be exploring, but i also know that surpassing those games, especially from Bethesda, will be nigh impossible. I think, once we accept that it will most likely Not surpass them, we can dial our expectations down to a manageable unhyped level.

When it comes to vanilla Bethesda games, there's no such thing as a playable state, sometimes literally lmao.

I wonder, how more many times Luke will bring up that quiz about people's excitement about next Bethesda game

wait for eldar scrolls 6 ultimate remastered edition coming out in 2034 for a bug free experience.

I kinda expect ES6 to release around the time witcher 4 and larians next big game drop and i just can't imagine those games not entirely humbling and dwarfing the meager experience ES6 is def going to be.

This had to have been an early April's fool joke

Given what Bethesda thinks qualifies as a "minimum viable product" these days, I'd hate to see what they'd pass off as merely "playable."

I don't want to think of Elder Scrolls 6 as coming after Starfield. To be excited. I want the creators to think, and I want to think of it coming after Skyrim. They realize what a special game it's been. And they are excited to recapture Skyrim in a new way and do it again. Make a good game that appears every once in a while in a blue moon. I guess we'll see.

During the Starfield promotional hype train the gigachud Todd Howard himself made the bold claim "gamers just love to explore".
This mindset is at the core of the rot at Bethesda. Starfield gave you unlimited exploration, the problem is there was nothing to explore. Barren rock after barren rock.
Fallout 76 was another great example of this. Yes, after 5 years, the map of Appalachia has some stuff to visit and people to speak to, but it still basically a whole lot of nothing to walk through on your way to something.
Fallout 4's commonwealth was good to explore, lots of life and things to do in pockets. Most of the landscape was just boring and grey with nothing on it though.
Skyrim was boring grey rock after boring grey rock.
Fallout 3 was boring grey rock after boring grey rock.
Oblivion at times was awe inspiring. Exploring Cyrodil was a joy, the world was vibrant and everywhere you looked was a ruin or cave to delve in.
Morrowind was perfection. A gorgeous world with lots of biome and architecture to match the environment. Cave, tombs, ruins, forts aswell as other interesting places to visit.
Bethesdas biggest problem being the state of the buggy games they release. No matter how good Morriwnd is to this day, it is still plagued with bugs that Berthesda never fixed. There is not a single Bethesda game that doesn't need to be fixed with mods. Morrowind, Oblivion and Fallout 3 are so good you can over look the bugs. However, from Skyrim onwards you cannot forgive them this.
They had 10 years working the same engine and never fixed anything, this in combination with stripped down systems, the lackluster NPCs and the lack of anything on the map (except the same dungeon over and over) have shown that Bethesda is either dying, or any of its successes were flukes.
The Elder Scrolls VI is their last chance really. They think they need another Skyrim, when in reality they need another Morrowind.
They need to make a game people want to improve with mods, adding new quests, places, items, etc. Not a game people have to make mods to fix.
A game with a hand crafted map, split into regions each with their own City and supplementary villages, showing diversity in architecture and traditions within the ame cultrue. NPC's with different attitudes. Lots of different factions working with and against each other. An RPG that allow players freedom to build whatever character they want and make terrible decisions if they so wish.
Bethesda have done it before, based upon their last attempts though, I do not have faith that they will do it again.

It was a typo. “It’s in a payable state”. Was what was meant to be said

Moores Law Is Dead just had one of the original Daggerfall/Morrowind devs on, and he briefly explained how he said to Todd Howard that the code that they were writing was the most valuable thing that they would do, so do it right. He left Bethesda because he couldn't bear the idea of working on another NetImmerse/Gamebryo/Creation Engine game after Morrowind GOTY. 25 years later and Bethesda are still using the same engine they wrote for Morrowind, it's never been rewritten.

The Red engine example is exactly what I’ve been thinking about Bethesda for a long time

CDPR moving from Red Engine is quite simple. Most of the devs, who can work with it, left the studio. So if you hire new ones, you need to spend too much money teaching them with those few people inside the studio who still knows the engine.
Bethesda didn't have that much dev drain, at least before Starfield.

Don't they use the same shit engine they used for Starfield? Creation Engine 2? God this will be trash. 1:30 the problem for them is that they have Todd Howard, and as we know he makes all decisions and he clearly lucked with Morrowind formula and has no fucking clue what made their other games pleasurable to play even though rest of the game (graphics, mechanics, story, UI, etc.) was at best mediocre. 5:50 CDPR moved to UE5 because Epic designated a group of engineers to port certain features from Red Engine to UE5.

By playable as in it loads the level. They can move the character about. I mean if you have ever messed with the creation kit , that's probably what they mean.

I sadly expect that both a CDPR and Bethesda game on unreal engine 5 will be the most blurry and laggy thing ever at launch

Bethesda ruined their reputation with Fallout 76, and then Starfield released with the resounding impact of a piece of cloth on a sand floor. I have absolutely no expectations for ES6, and somehow I still think I'll be disappointed.

The biggest problem with Starfield is the loading screens. If they had found a way so we did not have to go through 50 loading screens, the game would have been received a lot better. Unlike other, I do not hate Starfield, in fact I feel the urge to play the game occasionally the story and role playing in the game is better the Fallout 3 and Fallout 4, not on par with New Vegas but by no mean bad.

I still actively go back to skyrim and fallout 3 and do playthroughs of them and have more fun than most games these days and it’s not just the nostalgia, games these days just don’t focus enough on hand made exploration and the world. It’s all procedural generation and majority.

If they fuck up ESO 6, I will throw the absolute wobbly of the century. They'll need to lock me in a padded cell.

I'm still waiting for a playable build of Skyrim, Fallout 4 and Starfield

"Playable state": Ahhhh the ...CASH SHOP is coming along nicely, yes indeed.

Makes me worried cause all that development time in starfield could’ve been spent working on elder scrolls 6 which is what Todd really wanted to work on the whole time it sounds like.

am just hoping someone will leak footage soon i want to see gameplay

If they can hide the loading screen and remove some from elder scrolls 6 I think just by design it will be more fun then starfield because it’s all on one map and not disjointed with extra loading screens plus a lot of starfields dev Time was making the engine work so now that there done with that hopefully it will take less time to make and be more coherent

@6:00 about the creation engine: it's not about the graphics.
Don't you know that the engine is capable of tracking every SINGLE item in an open world, its state, owner and location (which really is not that much of an achievement if you think about it)? afaik UE5 is not capable of doing that.
Otherwise you cannot have a sandbox to play in, regardless what Devs sell you as a sandbox.

The thing is,itll still be a mess and yall will still give it a 10/10 for ambition.why does ambition mean anything if it doesnt work?gaming is dead

Bethesda's definition of 'playable state' is different to mine.

I hope it's not playeble yet because that would mean they build it on some ancient tech...

If there's anything I can expect from ES6 going by the standard of Skyrim, Fallout 4, Fallout 76, and Starfield, it will be vast as a ocean, deep as a puddle.

At this point Apathy has fully set in for me with the way Bethesda is running things.

The word "playable" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in this one!

This didn't come out of nowhere.... It's the 30th anniversary for ES.

A decade ago i would have been excited...now the only thing that comes to my mind is how much more they are going to fk up everything.

All they need to do to make it a really fun game is make it as good as a heavily modded Skyrim, which they should be able to easily do. Sure it's not going to be innovative but I will enjoy playing it

I get the majority of people have a negative outlook on the future of BGS games and why they question the talent level BGS studious have now. It’s fair for them to assume such things after seeing the last two games BGS has released. But with that being said I still believe they have talent and are capable of making good games. I think a lot of the problem BGS has had between their past two releases has come from the top. The decisions that were made by the higher ups to NOT play into the strengths of the Creation Engine and instead try to force the engine to adapt to both an always online multiplayer Fallout game and a space game with 1000 different planets made it to where the studio was handicapped from the start with the development of both of those games. Stop trying to be something you’re not and play to the strengths of both your developers and your gaming engine.

Dude.... even Baldur's Gate 3 on it's engine blows away Starfield. Whenever a scene with dialogue come up for Starfield, in the back of my mind I'm thinking how much better the facial and movement animation in Baldur's Gate 3 make it look like a bad puppet show. I mean I keep expecting Sarah Morgan to turn to me and say "MATT DAMON."....

They're using the Starfield engine 😂😂😂 i knew retroactively, after seeing Starfield landscapes, that the ESVi tease was basically a tech demo for the Starfield engine

"...joy, excitement and promise of adventure". Isn't that what they said about Starfield? When it comes to excitement, adventure and exploration Bethesda has been totally de-throned by Dragon's Dogma 2.

I'm in two minds. I was pleasantly surprised to hear its so far along, but its hard to get excited for it.

Part of me hopes they take the criticism of the Starfield to heart and actually try to improve for ES6.
Given their track record as of late though it might be cope on my part.