#went back and put in a read more because hoooollllly shit

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Weird long rant incoming, but this is only to be expected by you following my account.

I remember when I bought a PS5 with my stim check I had a friend that was absolutely flabberghasted that I was getting a playstation console. I tried to explain to him that I hadn't had a playstation system (with the exception of a PS3 I bought in 2011 that broke nearly immediately after the warranty ended) since the PS2, and there were a ton of exclusives I'd missed out on for years I wanted.

When I mentioned these exclusives, he looked at me like I was stupid and asked 'what games?' This flabberghasted me as I'd just explained the games I wanted to play.

The core of his argument was that Game Pass offered such a wide array of games that he couldn't imagine a few solo adventures that admittedly had similar game design could pry me away from it. To some extent he was right, Game Pass is a really fantastic service, but I've never felt that it offered me such fantastic exclusives that it would keep me with an X-Box console. I never would've gotten the X-Box One if it wasn't gifted to me second hand at a time where I hadn't really been gaming for a few years. I always wanted the PS4, because the game library looked far more interesting to me. Game Pass didn't really factor into my decision.

We debated a bit about exclusives, and the argument lead to him saying he couldn't imagine going to another console when Bethesda had settled down with Microsoft. I, very honestly, said 'I really don't give a shit about Bethesda anymore', and that ended the argument.

I liked the Elder Scrolls as a kid, and I still like the lore of it. I bought Morrowind and Oblivion on the same day, and Oblivion is very special to me. I bought Skyrim at launch at midnight, and while I didn't love it like I did Oblivion, I liked it a lot. Hell, for a very short period of time I tried to write for Beyond Skyrim because I believed/believe in that project, but real life got in the way of me ever doing much. But I never bought and rebought Skyrim like others did. I had my 360 copy, and then I played the remaster on Game Pass and never beat it. I've tried to beat Morrowind for the first time a bunch of times, so that's the game I go back to more, and inevitably put down because I'm bad at it. I love Oblivion but it's the only game I've ever 100% beat so I don't have a reason to go back.

Combine that with Fallout, a series I never really had an attachment to. I liked Fallout 3, I never got into New Vegas, I tried the originals and found they weren't for me, and I've never played more than a handful of hours of Fallout 4. The reason honestly is that I'm not hooked by the worldbuilding, I find it odd and clunky and it's just not for me. My Dad actually plays the games a lot, I gave him my copies because he enjoyed them more, but even he admits that he's extremely frustrated with these games he plays over and over again because of how riddled with bugs they are.

I haven't played Starfield. I have no interest in it. Any interest I might've had in it died on the vine with a combination of Bethesda's tanking approval, the knowledge that they were STILL using that fucking engine, and them not being interested in any of the things that would excite me about a sci-fi game.

The aforementioned conversation, by the by, happened before the release of Starfield. He was shocked I didn't really care about it. He still seems kind of shocked.

I think I just don't believe in the myth of Bethesda anymore. I don't think their games are these magical properties where you can do things no other games can offer, I never did, and that whole argument has been used to hold up a company so against any sense of change and self-reflection that it actively makes every entry they put out suffer more and more. I just can't fathom caring about a studio that seems entirely uninterested in moving on from what makes them comfortable in order to save the weight of their games from it's ever-snapping support structures. Worse, I can't understand repeatedly giving your faith to a company that lies to you about it, over and over again.

Bethesda is an anomaly to me. Everything I just said has been said a thousand times, and even the companies starkest defenders agree with these points... and yet they still are one of the most successful companies in the world. I find that fact deeply difficult to accept, and find it even more frustrating to watch the Bethesda release cycle clog along like a rollercoaster that needs to be decomissioned, yet has hundreds of fans seemingly ignoring the rotting wooden foundation excitedly climbing on to experience something that could so easily be duplicated by someone else who cares just a little more about their experience.