See... initially I had my Skyrim still counting time. For 387 hours, I had the achievements mod to work with the script extensions. At some point in the modding, that just stopped working and I never bothered to troubleshoot it. So steam doesn't log achievements or play time. Steam says I'm cheating. I say I'm winning... the experience.
If we go by Fallout 4, which does still log... that's 2073.73 hours. And I haven't been playing it as long. I think Skyrim is the better game. I play FO4 when I wanna mod but I'm tired of Skyrim. I don't know as much about it as I do Skyrim. I first played THAT on PS3. Girlfriend introduced me to it and told me she had enjoyed our time together. Secretly she just wanted to play WoW. Skyrim was a good choice. We'd kill whole weekends sitting next to each other playing those games, making those midnight trips to the gas stations for quick junk because we are obsessed and our bodies are simply burdens to us
So it was hundreds of hours back then. And then I built a new PC and got into modding, so...
That's exactly why I'm NOT buying this lol. Why would I do that? What's it got for me other than modding headaches? I mod the crap out of special edition, specifically. There are very few improvements they would be likely to make that would have much of any appeal to me. Historically, new versions mess with mods, if they change anything. Memory-related... but sometimes pathing shifts, or a table gets changed around... or the way textures/meshes get called and stored changes. And beyond that it's the same jeezlus game.
I will say, we have a kid at work who's like 19 that just picked it up for the first time. It has that place in gaming culture, where people still consider it relevant. Rare for games that old. Meaning if they pack it up in a re-release, people like him will buy it. I suppose it's about visibility. People all know Skyrim exists. But people on the outskirts might not take an interest on that alone. Roll out a new release, maybe that hits them on a day when they're curious... and they buy it. Easy way for them to drum up sales. They gotta know the core base isn't jumping on this. Most of us left playing are modding, ergo we don't care.
Their thinking... at least partially has got to be having as many people with ES5 on their minds when they DO actually begin to rollout ES6 for real. I'm sure it's for the same reason that they support creators on ES5. The cheapest way to keep people talking would be a re-release. Get some extra sales, keep the name from rubbing off of the lexicon. Easier if you have a bunch of people who bought and played the last one just a couple of years ago.
Remember, it won't matter if it sucks when it drops. What matters is that enough people are caring about and talking about it to buy it. Time corrodes that quite robustly. Stopgaps are needed. Thing is, you have a crowd with intense, highly fractalized and crytalline interests in the main titles. The stopgaps aren't enough. But by the same token, they'll probably buy and play the actual new title anyway. If another chunk of people buy this one, they might buy the next one. That's something they might look at.
But you know? Sometimes I think Bethesda really is so deluded that they see their base as rabid freaks who buy everything with a certain brand on it. They may not be totally wrong, either. That would be unfortunate, as their expectations for how events will transpire doesn't match-up with their choices a lot of the time... they leave you wondering "How could they think this would be okay?"
Obviously, tons of levels to it. When the time beween releases is this long it becomes like the physics inside of a black hole. Anything could happen. But I see the rationale. I think it's dumb. It's a dumb situation. But I get it, sort of.
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A question that will never be answered.
