The answer to the headline is obvious, right? AtE3back in 2018,Bethesdaoffered a road map for their next three games (and, when all is said and done, likely its next 10 years). First,Fallout 76, which launched that year. ThenStarfield, which is finally set to release this September. And then, far off in the future,The Elder Scrolls 6. No developer has been as clear about what comes next as Bethesda Game Studios.
But that’s not what I mean. At some point developers reach a point where it isn’t possible to go any bigger than their last game, and that presents a tough choice. Take the team behindSuper Smash Bros. Ultimate, for instance. The Smash games have consistently scaled up with each entry. The first game onNintendo 64had 12 playable characters and the most recent game, onSwitch, reached 89 by the time it added its last fighter. The sheer size of Smash Ultimate raises questions about where the team can even go from here. How do you top a roster that huge? Do you even try?
RELATED:If Starfield’s 1,000 Planets Scare You, Play Outer Wilds Instead
Bethesda will be in a similar position if Starfield is a success. The game looks like the logical endpoint of everything the studio has done up till now. It has huge cities, extreme customization for everything from your character to your base to your spaceship, and over 1,000 planets to explore. We’ve gone from, “See that mountain? you’re able to climb it.” to “See that moon? You can fly to it and build a city” in a matter of years. So, where does Bethesda go next? How can it possibly top the size and scale of Starfield when it eventually returns toThe Elder Scrolls?
It’s the same question I’ve been wondering while playingThe Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Its predecessor,Breath of the Wild, was a major expansion for the franchise, offering a map thatTwilight Princess,Wind Waker, andOcarina of Timecould fit neatly within with plenty of room to spare. But, it was only one tier, and Tears of the Kingdom used that lack of physical depth as an opportunity for growth, building up into the sky where islands now float, and down into the Depths where dimly lit adventures await. But, Eiji Aonuma has said that Breath of the Wild established anew formatfor the series that will keep going after Tears of the Kingdom. Where is there left to go, though? Will the next Zelda take us to space? Down to the fires of hell? Will Link drill through the center of the earth and find the United States on the other side? I don’t know, butNintendoseems intent on exploring that question.
We know that the literal answer to where Bethesda will go next is: back to Tamriel. But, how will the world of The Elder Scrolls measure up to Starfield? After having an entire galaxy to explore will Bethesda fans be content with just another continent? Some fans have complained aboutObsidian’s next game,Avowed, beingcloser in size to The Outer Worlds than Skyrim, and it’s true that a subset of players will always interpret smaller as worse and bigger as better.
But, at some point, we’ll reach a breaking point, which is why I think developers should start taking this moment of peak map size as an opportunity to scale back. Ubisoft is pausing from making seemingly infiniteAssassin’s Creedgames to build something more compact and focused with Mirage and it seems like a good path forward for other triple-A developers, too. Don’t try to compete with your largest games. Go back to the drawing board and build something smaller and richer.
NEXT:1,000 Planets, 500 Hours, And Everything Else That Turns Me Off As A Gaming Parent
