The Rise and Fall of Bethesda Game Studios
We all have heard of Bethesda, but it has recently went downhill.
By now, most people have heard of Bethesda Studios. They are the people behind Skyrim and Fallout 4. The reason everyone has heard of them is because of how they impacted the face of RPGs. It all started back in 2001 when it was created by Bethesda Softworks, it’s parent company.
In 1993, they started the now iconic Elder Scrolls series with The Elder Scrolls: Arena. Arena was an RPG, which is now tradition of most main series Bethesda games. It wasn’t as popular as the installments to come, but it was popular enough to gain a sequel, The Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall. Two more games in the series came out before the icon of RPGs, The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim.Skyrim is by far the most popular Elder Scrolls game, setting records across the board. Making Bethesda known in the gaming landscape.
4 years after Arena was released, the first Fallout game was released. Fallout was not made by Bethesda, in fact it was actually developed by Interplay Entertainment. Just a year after it’s sequel, Fallout 2 was released by the same developer. Though Fallout 3 was when the series' ownership fell into Bethesda’s hands after Interplay went bankrupt in 2004. Fallout 3 was different in another way. Apart from being owned by different companies, Fallout 3 completely changed the game’s art style and graphics. The first two installments were 2d games that had a top-down perspective. Fallout 3, on the other hand was a 3d game with a first and third person perspective. Fallout at the time was a fairly popular series, but was a household name when Fallout: New Vegas released. New Vegas was revolutionary. It made the series known on a massive level. And it was only amplified by the hit success following it, Fallout 4. Fallout 4 was the Magnum Opus of the series, having several massive DLCs, getting 3 Interactive Achievement awards, and the 2016 BAFTA Best Game award.
Though both series were incredibly successful and popular, they both had a downfall when they were both given an online multiplayer installment. The Elder Scrolls Online, and Fallout 76. To simply put it, people did not like these games, more Fallout 76 than The Elder Scrolls Online, but on release they both had major bugs that ruined the immersion. Both games did have a small cult following, but apart from that they weren’t very popular. Bethesda tried making another Elder Scrolls game, The Elder Scrolls: Blades, but it was a mobile and switch exclusive, apart from being a dungeon crawler city building game.
Nobody knows where both series are headed, but we can all hope that we find the spark that we lost.
