5 Questions We Still Have After Bethesda’s E3 2019 Presentation

Will Starfield and the Elder Scrolls VI Be Skipping the Rest of This Console Generation?

We already knew ahead of E3 that The Elder Scrolls VI and Starfield would be skipping Bethesda’s 2019 conference, but does that mean these games will be headed straight to Project Scarlett and PS5 as well?

Starfield and TES 6 got not much more than vague trailers at E3 2018, and then nothing this time around… they seem pretty far off.

In a recent interview with IGN, director (and legend) Todd Howard gave no hints as to the release dates of these upcoming games and stood by the publisher’s decision to miss E3. “I think that makes people come to it with really really fresh eyes,” he said.

In the same interview, Howard implied a need for hardware advancements in order to carry out his team’s vision, specifically in TES6’s case. ‘When you eventually, eventually see the game and what we have in mind,” he explains, “you’ll understand the gap [between games] more in terms of technology and what we want it to do.”

Does Doom Eternal’s Battlemode Mean There’s No Deathmatch?

In addition to a release date and a sizable chunk of gameplay, we also learned during Bethesda’s presser that Doom Eternal will feature an all-new multiplayer mode entitled “Battlemode.”

In Battlemode, you’ll fight against friends with one player controlling the Doom Slayer and two players respectively controlling demon characters. The mode was described as a “fighter” in the press conference, and fittingly, there look to be three rounds, a variety of strategic tactics to utilize, and possibly cooldowns.

In other words, Battlemode looks as if it could be a robust multiplayer experience with room for frequent updates and potentially all the trappings that come with service-type games– something much more than just an arcade-y jaunt to pass the time.

Also, will Battlemode be the only multiplayer component in Doom Eternal? It seems like a missed opportunity (especially for such a pillar in the genre) to leave out a quintessential first-person-shooter game mode like deathmatch.

Will Fallout 76’s New Updates Actually Be Good?

Fallout 76 seems to be finding increasingly sure footing after its disappointing launch, and soon it will introduce two updates that will “fundamentally change the game”.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea of making the game feel more alive with actual living NPCs and dialogue choices that make the Appalachian wasteland feel meaningful. In fact, I wish these features had been incorporated from the very beginning.

However, unless this was planned from the game’s inception, Bethesda is fundamentally changing a world, atmosphere, and gameplay loop that it’s been feverishly fixing for the past seven months.

Will Wastelanders and Nuclear Winter snap nicely in place on top of the existing Fallout 76 foundation? Is a new Battle Royale the next thing that Fallout 76 needs?

What Exactly Will You Do in Deathloop?

We know there’s death and a Groundhog’s Day-like looping of events involved in Arkane Studio’s upcoming release, but what will this look like as far as gameplay?

The accompanying press releases’ description of Deathloop conjures up similarities to the developer’s previous release Dishonored– which is really exciting.

You’ll play as an “extraordinary assassin” as you explore “meticulously designed levels” and “approach every situation any way you like.” Deathloop appears to contain the soul of Dishonored, and an infinite serving of creative death-dealing sounds good to me.

Will Bethesda Share the Power of Orion?

When Director of Publishing James Altman first introduced Orion during Bethesda’s E3 2019 conference, he compared it to the advent of the first-person-shooter and “commercially viable” VR technology.

Altman placed Orion on a pretty high pedestal with those lofty analogies, but if this new tech can really pull off what Bethesda says it can, it may deserve all that lauding.

Bethesda’s new streaming software could be truly revolutionary. Orion could “drastically reduces the cost of streaming for players and developers,” with its ability to stream “20 percent faster per frame at a 40 percent lower bandwidth.”

Orion could be a necessity for streaming services like Microsoft’s xCloud and Google Stadia and their ambitious goals of a latency-free 4K 60FPS experience.

If Bethesda can really pull this off, are they going to be willing to share? (For a cost of course.) Or will they keep this proprietary tech to themselves and their ever-expanding catalog of games and game studios?