Morrowind was actually a pretty dang good first attempt at this. The world building was surprisingly strong, the setting was unique and interesting. It held inspiration from Heart of Darkness, which was fairly bold for a fantasy RPG. There was a complex political climate with clashes between colonizers and the colonized, on top of this world-threatening event that's going down. You met many of the people deeply involved with the sticky situation the island finds itself in, including the local god-king Vivec who is holding the island hostage by artificially suspending a giant meteor above it (including preserving its inertia) and claiming that if followers stop worshipping him, the meteor will crash and kill everyone. Welp. There's lots of cool stuff like this strewn about. But here's the thing, it's all relating to the setting and the backstory. Anything beyond that is pretty threadbare. Your mission was to find the savior the dark elf prophecies speak of so this person can save the world from some looming evil. You go from dungeon to samey dungeon, and BIG TWIST: you were the savior the whole time! You save the world, game over. You saw a lot of cool stuff along the way, but it felt more like a sightseeing tour than a proper narrative. You were an agent following the whims of others the whole time, too. You get the sense that no one at Bethesda had any experience writing these kinds of stories. But the world-building was so cool that you wanted to keep exploring for hours on end, seeing the unique sights of Morrowind and getting involved in their conflicts. The main quest kind of sucked, but the side quests were a lot of fun. They themselves didn't have particularly strong stories and were mainly filled with one-dimensional characters who just wanted a task done, but there was some real neat stuff thrown in there, like the last dwarf alive, in some plague colony, with his lower body replaced by mechanical spider legs. Cool! It was also the first TES game with an extensive mod community.
(Morrowind was full of bizarre flora, fauna, and architecture)
Oblivion was a disaster in a lot of ways. The industry was firmly planting itself in support of strong narratives in not just certain kinds of games, but ALL games, now. While Half Life did a lot for storytelling in shooters at the time, it was nothing in comparison to Max Payne, an intense third-person shooter with a lengthy, twisting plot and plenty of dialog. There was Warcraft 3, a real-time strategy with an epic fantasy story attached (the previous WC games had stories that were more window-dressing than anything). If your game didn't tell a long, complex story, it was junk. It didn't matter what kind of game it was. Even Rockstar got in on the trend with their nonsensical murder simulators, Vice City and especially San Andreas. Bethesda could not afford to release an open world RPG without an absolutely epic story. But here's the thing, they SUCK at at storytelling! They're good at writing backstory, at worldbuilding. Every other facet of their writing is terrible. But gosh darn if they weren't going to try. They splurged on several very expensive voice actors to deliver their surely incredible dialog, then only had a handful of VAs rest for the rest of their hundreds of characters. Oops. The dialog in the main questline was as generic as possible. There were no truly interesting hooks to it, the player didn't have to make any difficult decisions, and the characters were as flat as cardboard. You were tasked to find the savior, did so by going from dungeon to samey dungeon, doing a LOT of busywork in closing those damn oblivion gates, and BIG TWIST: there is no twist! You find the savior and he defeats the final boss, saving the world for you. You weren't even the main hero! Bethesda's one saving grace, their world-building, failed them here. Cyrodiil was originally written as a dense jungle with interesting, dynamic cultures, but was retconned because they deemed verdant plains and deer-filled forests to have more mass appeal in the US and Europe. They spent a lot of money developing a complex AI system where every NPC would have needs and wants, and would seek out their own methods to fulfill them, and then disabled it because it didn't work at all. One thing Bethesda did do is up their game on the side quests. A lot of them were generic, but there were these main guilds in the game, and each one had their own storyline, and some got reasonably involved. They were mostly kind of middling, but the star of the show was the Dark Brotherhood questline, where you join a guild of assassins. There were twists and turns to its story, shady characters with grey-area motives, many assassination contracts had complex setups, and there were multiple endings to the quest line. It felt like its own game. Looking back on it, it's really nothing special, but it was like a small pond in the middle of a scorching desert, an oasis players took solace in and gathered around as a shining example of how to do questing in an open world game. One man wrote and designed all of these quests, Emil Pagliarulo, and his work stood out so much from the rest of Bethesda's offering, they handed him the reigns to all of Fallout 3.
Fallout 3 was a cool game, although it didn't feel very much like a real Fallout game. I'm not talking about the shift in perspective and gameplay, but the shift in tone, storytelling style, and world design. And you know what? Bethesda's writing still sucked. It became clear that Emil Pagliarulo is not an especially skilled writer. When taken out of the sea of shit the rest of Oblivion was, Emil's quest design and writing was shown to be fairly amateurish and not actually all that interesting. The story still felt uninspired. It was a personal story to find your father (and maybe save the world in the process), but therein laid the problem. The player character was still nameless, mute, and devoid of personality. Can you really tell a personal story involving family with that kind of setup? Well, you can, but you can't get anyone to care. And while the world design was reasonably interesting in its own right, with plenty of unique sights to see, the setting overall was a total failure. It was meant to be 100 years after the apocalypse, but it felt like it was just one year, with no organization, barely anything in the way of factions (other than two shadowy organizations), and people still scrambling and scavenging to survive. I still had more fun with it than I did with Oblivion, but it felt so lacking in so many areas. A couple years later, New Vegas came out developed by a different studio, one staffed by members with experience developing previous Fallout games, Obsidian Entertainment. And it totally clowned Bethesda and their attempt at a Fallout game. It had its own set of downsides, but gosh was New Vegas fun. Many characters individually had more depth to them than the combined depth of all of FO3's characters combined. The quests had a wealth of options, diverging branches, and alternate outcomes. The dialog was often witty and compelling to listen to. The world truly felt like how a post-apocalyptic world should feel like, with budding governments, organized banditry, and more overt faction wars competing for territory with the citizenry caught in the middle. They even managed to make the story feel personal despite your character being a no-name cipher. Many of the dungeons felt more unique. There was more loot with a crafting system. The combat, armor, and weapon systems felt more balanced and more fun. The one point I will concede is that aimlessly exploring the wasteland felt a bit more frustrating and less rewarding.
(an example of the branching structure of one side quest in New Vegas)
Would Bethesda learn from their mistakes in Oblivion and Fallout 3, and Obsidian's triumphs in New Vegas? Yes and no. Skyrim was fun. Bethesda's world-building strength has returned to them Skyrim was gorgeous, varied, and a joy to explore. They incentivized exploration in some really smart ways. Character leveling didn't feel so broken. The story, though, was still a problem. Bethesda is still shit at writing. You are the chosen one, overcome these trials, delve through dungeon through samey dungeon, kill a dragon or two, and save the world! It was still stock fantasy fair, without a hint of depth or creativity. That's okay though, because exploring the world is fun. What about the questing in the rest of the world? Well, the faction quests felt like stepped-up versions of Oblivion's faction quests. They had a bit more dialog, a bit more story to them, but most of them were still kind of mediocre. The characters were still largely one dimensional. Most of them did allow you to make a decision or two, which could affect the outcome in some inconsequential manner. The stand-out side-plot in this game was the civil war. It created an interesting political climate, but how much did it really impact the world? You could side with one faction or the other, and each had their own quest line. The faction I sided with lead up to a cool battle where we laid siege to a major city, and assaulted it. There were missions that lead up to it that determined the effectiveness of the soldiers, siege weapons, etc. When you finally got into the battle, and catapults were going off, spells were firing, and soldiers were charging the gates, it was so cool! Then the scripting broke at multiple points, requiring reloads. Well, it's an Elder Scrolls game. Then you won the battle, some buildings were smoldering a little, and a different man sat on the throne. That was it. You could go into towns occupied by the opposing faction and no one would bat an eye at you. It felt like the battle had no impact whatsoever. It was all a bit underwhelming. Bethesda repeatedly teases the players in their games, make grand promises, and fail to deliver time and time again.
I'm kind of getting sick of being disappointed. I'm getting sick of being a no-personality mute who is little more than an errand boy. I'm sick of the samey dungeons in every single game. I'm sick of the quest design that feels like you're going down a straight predetermined line instead of doing things your way. I'm sick of the shoddy writing, the shallow characters with crystal clear motivations, the stale and generic dialog, and the simple boilerplate storylines. Yes, Bethesda makes some great worlds to explore, but you know, I've played every single Bethesda game. I've played plenty of other compelling open world games. I've kind of had my fill. I watch the Fallout 4 trailer and am filled with apathy. I'm not saying Bethesda should ditch the open world, not at all, but I need something more. I'm looking forward to E3 this year. I'm a long-time fan of Bethesda's games, and I desperately want them to prove me wrong. But I won't hold my breath for it.
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On a side-note, The Witcher 3 has been giving me that something more. Its characters are all fascinating, even the minor ones. The story is a compelling search for your adopted daughter in trouble. The quests are sprawling with many avenues of approach and outcomes, even the side quests. The writing is entertaining and never fails to capture your attention. You are prompted with so many decisions on such a constant basis, all of which have some impact on the world big or small, that it no longer feels like you're playing a god controlling the fates of these characters, but you ARE Geralt of Rivia, in the world, making these decisions. It's an incredibly immersive experience. You end up never wanting to reload and take back your decisions, because they become so personal. And the open world is not sacrificed even a little in the face of this narrative experience, with a huge world to explore with an enormous amount of things to discover. The Witcher 3 allows us to have our cake and eat it, too. What is a Bethesda game in the face of this?
(as I write this, I'm itching to jump back into The Witcher 3)
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