Even in light of Baldur's Gate 3’s success, former Bethesda leader is sceptical about the return of The Elder Scrolls to 'fiddly statistics'

Baldur's Gate 3 topped our annual Top 100 list for the year, and was a huge success both in terms of critical acclaim and commercial success. If you didn't know, we liked it.

It did this against what the big-budget RPG companies would have you believe is convention. It's a TTRPG-based turn-based RPG, using Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition, but there are no quick-time events. I'd argue that it is even more demanding than the D&D ruleset since you control four characters in a singleplayer campaign. You can also equip tons of magical items.

In recent years, RPGs such as Dragon Age and Final Fantasy that have been around for a long time have become more action-oriented. Bethesda's games have always had a first-person element, but they've leaned more towards this direction in recent years. They've shed RPG mechanics and complex like Todd Howard was really into the book The Life-Changing magic of removing stats.

Starfield's RPG mechanics were particularly thin, even when compared to Skyrim. I never felt like I was playing a specific archetype, but rather a suggestion. According to a former Bethesda game developer, this is not likely to change. Bruce Nesmith explains why he took the lead on Skyrim:

"When you consider something like Baldur’s Gate 3, that's a completely different animal." They had a very clear mission. They were converting Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition to a computer game. It was a deliberate look backwards.

Mmm. I don't believe Nesmith is completely wrong. Baldur's Gate is an outlier and unless you are one of the big boys, like Atlus, it's hard to sell a crunchy RPG. I'm not convinced that TTRPGs have become a relic of the past, or that BG3 is a nostalgic game. D&D's recent success has been largely due to things like Critical Role. I mean, hell--Dungeons & Dragons is actually four years olderthan Skyrim which is the Nesmith-designed game!

He's still not convinced that BG3 will "presage a complete return to more numbers, more fiddly characters sheets, and things like that" in Bethesda's favor, adding that "whether or no the rest of industry will follow suit I don'tknow. I'm not intelligent enough to say this. I think Bethesda wanted Skyrim to get out of its way.

"You can see it everywhere in Skyrim. Todd is a strong proponent of the interface disappearing if you are not doing anything that requires it to be visible. All you see is the entire world. That's it. "You just see the world."

I'm not going to lie, it makes me a little sad. I started playing Bethesda games around the time that Oblivion was released. I thought that the game had a good balance between fiddly RPG nonsense, (spell creation and enchantment) and action combat. It's a little archaic, but I felt like I was playing a class,and can't help wondering what a modern Oblivion game would be like.

I also disagree with the idea interfaces and fiddly RPGs are the enemy of immersion. To go back to TTRPGs, I was fully immersed by the results of a d20 despite staring blankly at a sheet of numbers. The mechanics can tell a tale and (in my recent Pathfinder 2e adventure) can elevateit.

Ask anyone who has played Dwarf Fortress. They will tell you their stories of pixeldom, as if it were a big-budget VR experience they have personally experienced. Bethesda’s quest to remove these perceived walls makes me feel like they are underestimating the imagination of players.

I'm reminded about that infamous talk from Bethesda leader Emil Pagliarulo (which is, in fairness, eight years old), which had a lot to do with how players would tear apart your story, and to "keep things simple, stupid". We'll get a migraine if we need to add a stat or read something thought-provoking. Baldur's Gate 3 has also proven to be incorrect in this regard. There are plenty of mature themes and textured text.

But it could also be my nostalgia. Bethesda is known for sanding down the edges of their games with each new release. I'd bet there are Skyrim players who think the game has the perfect balance, or experienced Morrowind RPG veterans who have a deep appreciation of that game's unassailable gameplay mechanics (sorry Josh). If Todd has always believed that immersion is more important than flavourful mechanics in RPGs, then I guess they'll continue down that road.