Bethesda Not Planning Remasters Like Skyrim Special Edition
Jan. 9, 2017Bethesda Not Planning Remasters Like Skyrim Special Edition
Speaking toOfficial Xbox Magazine, Bethesda Vice President Pete Hines said that the remaster process that broughtSkyrim Special Editionto the current gen is the exception rather than the rule, and that revamped past experiences should not be expected.
According to Hines, much of the reason for the Skyrim remaster lies with the team’s active development ofFallout 4on the current gen platforms. In his words:
Skyrim was more about the work that Bethesda Game Studios had done in the early days of getting ready for Fallout 4 on this generation of consoles—moving the Skyrim engine and doing some work to run it on this generation of consoles just to see how it worked, and so forth, before they started doing all their Fallout stuff. It’s the most recent thing they did.
Moving the Skyrim engine onto the current gen in order to tune it for Fallout 4, made it relatively easy to bring Skryim along to a new platform. With Skyrim being the game the development team most recently worked on, it was not a far leap to update it.
When asked about the challenges of remasters and bringing mod support to consoles, he had this to add about their developmental focus in general:
Generally speaking, our approach has usually been that instead of spending all this time on a thing we’ve already made, why don’t we instead spend that effort on something new, or on the next version of that thing?
Fan favorite experiences like Morrowind and Oblivion are much older games and their adaptation to a current gen experience would be significantly more of an investment than Skyrim required, which means that given Hines’ statements, the possibility of them getting the special edition treatment are slim to none, at least in the near to moderate future. The vibrant PC mod community has already begun tackling overhauls of these games and it seems for now, those are going to be the only avenues for players interested in remastered versions of Bethesda’s classic open world games.
Many love reliving classic experiences but there is something to be commended about forging forward with new experiences. What side of the fence are you on? Would you rather an Elder Scrolls 6 or Fallout 5 or do you want to see the potential of Morrowind tapped via a remastered edition? Let us know in the comments!
Visit theSkryim Wiki
More onSkyrim
Emergence
Editor at Fextralife. I look for the substantial in gaming and I try to connect video games to the emotions and stories they elicit. I love all things culture and history and have an odd fondness for the planet Jupiter. I think my dogs are pretty awesome too.
If they even look at the internet once in a harvest moon, I doubt they will given the negative feedback on it. In fact, I think they’d even be relieved since they wouldn’t have to worry about having voice actors for the player character. I think they did it as an experiment, test to see if people want it since Bioware did it and was successful. On the plus side, the fact that NPCs can refer to you by name was cool. It seemed like them trying to test new waters, and came with mixed results. Just hope they learn from it.
I believe they gave their blessing to the porting projects such as Skywind (Morrowind on top of Skyrim). So it makes sense they’re no longer interested in the past IP.
Same. I just want the option to play it (Oblivion/Morrowind) without having to get another PS3, new gaming rig, or resorting to my crappy lap with no internet functionality (which I rarely use).
I get the idea of wanting to move forward and not just remaster games. But then they did Skyrim and got me hopeful.
But as long as they don’t give my character voice acting in TES 6, I’ll be fine with waiting for the next game instead of getting more remastered games that I’ve already played to the abyss and back.
I’m sad to hear my hopes of a remastered Oblivion die.At least their working on a new TES. I’d like to see the Black Marsh and Elsweyr. Summerset Isles would be decent. Valenwood would be cool to see how crazy the wood elves are in their native land (cannibals living in tree ents sounds fun).
I’d only want them to remaster a game in the sense of just making it fully functional on new hardware and software, in other words, just update it for modern systems so we don’t have to use emulators or mess with programs.
If a game I’ve been interested in & never played because it didn’t get released for a platform I own, I’ll pick it up if it gets a remake for my system of choice. That being said, I’d rather they spend their time on new games. Yes, it could be argued that I’m missing out on the other experience, but no matter what you do you’re missing out on something else whenever you do anything.
Bethesda, imo, made a bad decision about not releasing review copies early, but I agree with their idea to concentrate on new games.
