Bethesda's E3 2018 Press Conference: C-
I've never watched a conference where I felt like a company blatantly disrespected and shit all over their fans more than this one. The amount of hubris Bethesda showed during their conference was astounding. Whether it was mocking people who've wanting Elder Scrolls VI for years, or people who've criticized Bethesda's reputation for releasing very buggy, incomplete games, they never ceased to undermine and disrespect these people. On top of that, their "teaser" for ES6 literally showed us and told us nothing that we didn't already know, as if mocking the fans with an empty gesture to shut us up. Oh, and let's not forget Bethesda's campaign to destroy the single player, offline RPG by requiring an online connection for games you can supposedly play by yourself.
Bethesda's fan trolling and insults, as well as an over emphasis on mobile games overshadowed what would have been a huge positive for me which was the announcement of Doom Eternity. Other than that there wasn't anything else that was exciting or interesting enough coming out in the near future that had me excited enough to forget about their douche baggery on display tonight.
Going back to Elder Scrolls VI as well as their new IP Starfield, my hopes that these will be games I'll want to buy, play and enjoy are all but extinguished. Bethesda is clearly trying to move all there games to an always online format, even when they insist a game can still be played by yourself. If they wanted to give me and countless others assurance they'd tell us that we could completely play offline and still have access to 100% of what the game has to offer, but clearly this won't be the case, or even possible most likely. While we know nothing about Starfield or ES6, I don't think it is an unfair assumption given the state of Bethesda that offline single player play will even be an option. Even if these games received online modes separate from the main story campaign, I'd be okay with that, but what they're trying to do if Fallout 76 is any indication is make online gaming something everyone has to deal with even if they don't want to. What this has done is completely killed my hype for Elder Scrolls 6, which was possibly my number 1 most hyped game before tonight's conference. It goes without saying that I really couldn't care less about Starfield now, not that it had any reputation for me to get hyped on in the first place.
I'm a hair from boycotting Bethesda and if Elder Scrolls VI is announced to be an always online game then I most certainly will never buy a new Bethesda game ever again, or at least until they change the course of their misguided ambition to make their RPGs online always.
EDIT: I have re-evaluated this conference as well and I am giving Bethesda some slack and see that I may have been to hard on them. I still feel like there was some level of disrespect to their fans and also can only see the ES6 teaser as a huge "shut the hell up already!" but overall I don't feel as cynical about Bethesda's intentions. With that said, I still thought the only things worth getting hyped for were Doom Eternity and the Wolfenstein expansion/sequel. Not enough was shown of Starfield and I still feel like it's BS they're making a Fallout game that is always online and multiplayer focused. But for what it is, the conference wasn't as bad as I originally saw it. I'll give it a C-, which I feel is more than fair.
