Matt's New Elder Scrolls Video

[LOTO]

https://youtu.be/-IjQQWp5_NI

Just watched the new vid and I have some thoughts.

As genuinely cool and technically impressive as these kinds of fan projects are, I'm bothered by the ways people tend to talk about stuff like this; and some of that was visible in the way Matt described them, as well.

I'm especially wary of the description of "this is the best way to play these games now". It's indicative of the dangerous and sad decline that older games have in the public consciousness, as though the new thing with the bigger graffix numbers and controls altered to conform to current trends serves to completely obsolete the original experience just because "all of the content is present". And to condescendingly describe valuing that original experience as just nostalgia is pretty unfortunate.

I personally haven't played any Elder Scrolls game older than Oblivion (though they are on the list, maybe next year). However, I've experienced something very similar with the original System Shock. The 1994 release of that game has what is charitably described as an absolutely ludicrous control scheme for crazy people. I would explain in detail but it would take too long. Suffice to say that nearly half of the entire keyboard is used just for moving your character around in addition to a separate mouse cursor to interact with the UI.

It truly is a delightful game to play and one of my favourites, because once you eventually overcome the learning curve on those controls, you start to see why it was like that and what such cumbersome inputs add to the experience. Likewise, it's a game that is still available to buy and play, but the original version comes packaged with DOSBox and runs through that.

Unfortunately, when someone new who is interested in checking out System Shock asks how to play it, they'll more often than not just get told to pick up the "Enhanced Edition" re-release which completely reworks the gameplay into something more in-line with current day games and especially its own sequel. This unavoidably causes new players to miss out on those unique controls how they really do tie the whole experience together. And this is assuming they don't get recommended the very different 2023 remake instead.

So while I'm impressed at these fan projects and their existence and am happy that Matt provided a spotlight on some very high quality work, I strongly disagree with his framing here on how these unofficial fan remasters are somehow definitive replacements for some historically important classics. The goal should always be to encourage people to check out the original versions of games where they can (and with TES, you can. They are available on digital storefronts and run when you click play), and view these fan works as very cool supplements to the original games - not as replacements for them.

Also nice censor edit goof at 7:59 lol