There has been a recent trend at Bethsoft where in they are making their games more and more accessible to casual gamers. It is a disturbing trend for hardcore gamers like us, but from a business point of view it seems understandable. There is a larger market for casual gamers than hardcore gamers, mostly because every Tom, Dick and Harry owns a console these days. If they want to tap into this market, they cannot release something too deep or too complex otherwise they risk turning-off the casuals which would result in lost revenue opportunities. Quoting a comment someone made on reddit: "There is a difference between a company that makes money and a company that makes games."
That being said, the effects of such "watering down" of Bethsoft games is very observable over the years. I haven't played much Morrowind since I started playing the Elder Scrolls series from Oblivion onwards. What Morrowind and Oblivion had in common was the stats, star-signs, classes, skills and faction affinity. Star-signs that you were born under granted you various bonuses while the character classes assigned your major and minor skills. The only way to level up was to grind your major skills. Such a mechanic was somewhat restrictive since your character was locked into playing a very specific role (stealth, combat, magic or combinations of these). But it is good since you would have very specific ways of solving your quests according to your character class, since in real life you'd tend to solve problems based on your aptitude.
Fallout 3 came out after Oblivion and it had similar mechanics. But unlike the current Fallout, it had serious depth, interesting characters and locations, and a deep storyline. Only downside I felt about Fallout 3 when it came out was that it had a very definitive ending. Which led to me postponing the main quest because once you finished the main quest, the game would end. Bethsoft however remedied that when they released the Broken Steel DLC, which allowed you to continue after the main quest ends. Fallout 3 also had a very deep karma system, too low karma and bounty hunters would come after you, too high and mercenaries would come after you.
Skyrim and subsequently Fallout 4 lack a lot of aspects of their predecessors. Mostly lack of depth, simplified dialogue trees, simplified mechanics etc. This has been a major complaint from many long time fans of Bethsoft games, that they have been "dumbing down" their favourite franchise. Though most of it could be attributed to the business related decisions as I have said above, some people attribute this to different teams working on these games. In other words, the team that worked on Skyrim is not the same team that worked on Oblivion and the team that worked on Oblivion is not the same that worked on Morrowind, same goes for Fallout. Therefore, stylistic and gameplay mechanics may differ across different iterations of the games. For example, the lead designer of Oblivion was the same guy who later designed Kingdoms Of Amalur and you can see that they are both similarly styled.
In the future, I think games will become more and more casual as publishers try to broaden their markets. Companies like Konami are even giving up their game development division to concentrate on mobile games and pachinko machines. But I am hopeful that even if one company departs or gives up their core ideals, someone else would rise in their wake. We must all be thankful to CDPR in this regard.
nice one
