I've been a Bethesda fan for decades, by which I mean I consider Morrowind my favourite game of all time and I've gotten progressively crankier about everything released thereafter, so perhaps it's inevitable that the dull thud Starfield made when it released has made me start thinking about the studio, its past, and its future. In short? I think it needs a change. A major one.
But not, perhaps, the change most people of my disposition might usually demand, which is to see if Ken Rolston fancies coming back before luring Michael Kirkbride into a room containing a dragon's hoard of substances and not letting him out until he's rewritten the Bible. You can't go home again, and if we learned anything from Starfield's anodyne plot and forgettable characters, it's that Bethesda just isn't chasing narrative complexity at this point.
It is, however, interested in systems. Bethesda's worlds are (usually) ones in which everyone has a job, a routine, and a bedtime, and even though Starfield jettisoned all that in favour of a panoply of crafting doodads and some No Man's Sky-style inspiration, it's still heavy with unrealised systemic potential in the same way all the company's games are. So here's my pitch: Bethesda, let your games write themselves, because I'm not sure you're all that interested in doing it anymore.
In essence, what I mean by this is to turn these rolling sandboxes into something more akin to Dwarf Fortress, Rimworld, or Crusader Kings. I don't mean "turn them into strategy games," but rather lean into the jank, the weirdness, the haphazard collection of systems that often fail to mesh.
Let Constellation fall apart because Andreja slept in Sarah's bed and everyone got a bit shooty about it. Let major characters fall out because one of them is programmed to love sweet rolls and another is violently allergic. Get a bit State of Decay with it: I want Akila City to collapse into factional conflict because everyone disagreed about whether Pearl Jam rules. If the main quest—if we still have to have one—becomes unbeatable in that time? Que será, será... Read more.
