Back in the 90s, Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls was a deep, numbers-heavy RPG that borrowed heavily from the genre’s basis in Dungeons and Dragons. Today, The Elder Scrolls still has complex elements, but the series has moved away from random dice rolls, attributes and other systems to focus on providing a more casual experience.
On the other hand, the RPG genre recently saw a new shift in the form of Baldur’s Gate 3, an RPG that looked back on the complexities of past titles to provide the best transition of Dungeons and Dragons from tabletop to monitor. In an interview with VideoGamer, Skyrim lead designer Bruce Nesmith explained that Larian’s success is an “exception” to the last decade of gaming trends, but one that shows a shift in desire from gamers.
The Elder Scrolls had to change
With almost 40 years of development experience, Nesmith started making games around the time of Dungeons and Dragons’ debut. Back then, it was common to attempt to adapt the complex nature of D&D into even the most basic games, but as gaming became more accepted in the mid-2000s, developers opted to tone down mechanical complexity to create a more casual entry point for millions of gamers. Famously, Skyrim abandoned a lot of systems from past Elder Scrolls titles, making an RPG that focused more on systems reactivity than stat-based appeal.
“[Gamers] didn’t want to have outrageously complex character sheets [in 2011]“
SKYRIM LEAD DESIGNER BRUCE NESMITH
As Nesmith explains, that decision came very early on with even the earliest version of Skyrim axing the attributes system last seen in
Oblivion. Removing attributes in Skyrim was a “day one” decision, opting to slim things down to focus on the reactivity of the world. As the veteran Bethesda developer explains, “every game is made within the culture at the moment you’re working on it” and the culture at that point was no longer looking to replicate D&D.
The character creator screens of Arena, Daggerfall and Morrowind fell out of fashion, but Bethesda used this opportunity to create its own form of RPG.
“In the days of Daggerfall, everybody was trying to replicate the tabletop experience, which means that you were rules heavy,” he said. “Your character description was large and, I would argue unwieldy, and as time moved forward, that was less and less of interest to the audience. They didn’t want to have outrageously complex character sheets, and I was actually one who aggressively pushed for streamlining.”
Now, gamers want that complexity back. In the era of video essays and “best build” guides, there is a trend for some of that more extensive character creation and stat-based gameplay to return. For Nesmith, Skyrim was a chance for Bethesda to make a title where the game got “out of its own way”, but a game like Baldur’s Gate 3 is the complete opposite.
“When you look at something like Baldur’s Gate 3, I think that’s a very different animal. They had a very specific charge. They were taking Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition and putting it onto a computer game. So it was intentionally looking backwards, intentionally seeing the old tabletop presentation with the die rolls and all of that. It was, you know, reflecting back to the good old days from the point of view of the people who used to play those kinds of old playing games back then or did now to give them that joy buzzer. So I think Baldur’s Gate 3 is actually an exception to that.”
Baldur’s Gate 3 won’t change Bethesda
While Nesmith departed Bethesda back in 2021, moving onto smaller games and novels like
Mischief Maker and
Glory Seeker, he doesn’t see the studio moving back to the complexities found in games like Baldur’s Gate. Just like the studio will
likely not be moving to Unreal Engine, the current state of depth seems perfectly suited to the company’s aims.
“I don’t think [Baldur’s Gate 3’s success] necessarily presages a complete change over back to more numbers and more fiddly character sheets and things like that,” Nesmith told us. “Whether or not the rest of the industry will follow suit, I don’t know. I’m not smart enough to say that, But I think that through Skyrim, Bethesda has wanted to have the game get out of its own way.
“You see that everywhere in Skyrim. Todd [Howard] is a big proponent of the interface vanishing if you’re not doing something that needs it to be visible. So all you see is the world. That’s it. You just see the world.”
“You feel vindicated [in its popularity], you do. The thing that you loved, that you saw value in, that a lot of the rest of the world did not.”
BRUCE NESMITH
For Bethesda, this mantra caused many things that millions of gamers love, but some gamers hate. The Magic System was simplified, but was made more reactive with things like igniting oil spills; attributes were gutted in favour of a simplified skill tree; combat relied less on stats and more on player action. While Baldur’s Gate 3 also has some of these more reactive elements, as Nesmith explains, it aims for a completely different experience.
However, gaming is now in a space where there’s a massive audience for both types of RPG. While many will compare the
upcoming Elder Scrolls 6 and Baldur’s Gate 3, Nesmith is correct: they are two completely different beasts.
RPG players are finally vindicated
Making RPGs through the Satanic Panic, Nesmith recalls a time where players had to be “careful who you told” that you played the now incredibly popular board games. As religious groups blamed murders and crimes on fabricated cults allegedly inspired by the tabletop game, playing D&D was a secret you had to protect.
“I was friends with [some] who thought that the game was a bad influence on children, who had religious objections to it, and so I did not tell them what I did,” Nesmith explained. “Other people that didn’t have those prejudices, I did tell them, but you know I had to be careful. These days, interestingly, it works the other way around.”
Nowadays, Dungeons and Dragons is incredibly popular with content creators roleplaying entire campaigns becoming its own industry, a big-budget feature-length movie releasing in cinemas and video game adaptations like Baldur’s Gate 3 becoming one of the best-selling games of all-time.
The Satanic Panic of the 1980s led many gamers to hide their love of Dungeons and Dragons as thousands were deemed cultists and criminals for playing the game.
“You feel vindicated [in its popularity], you do,” Nesmith told us. “The thing that you loved, that you saw value in, that a lot of the rest of the world did not, now the rest of the world is seeing the value in it. I haven’t been there since the literal beginning, I wasn’t playing with Gary Gygax when he was first coming up with this stuff, but I’ve been there since pretty early on. I’ve watched the whole transformation of gaming of all sorts, from being a backwater entertainment for geeks and nerds to being something that is considered to be commonplace and accepted.”
While The Elder Scrolls 6 may not return to dense character sheets and dice-roll combat, it’s a game that doesn’t exist without the decades of Dungeons & Dragons before it. However, as with any genre, Bethesda has moved to create its own sub-genre, millions of players adore it, and everyone is waiting to see what comes next.