Since the series first began in 1994, The Elder Scrolls has delivered immersive role-playing experiences to a host of enamored fans. The latest traditional entry in the series, 2011’s The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, was a massive success upon release. Praise was heaped upon the game’s world-design, accessibility and the massive amount of content.
Following Skyrim, fans have naturally been craving information about the next installment in the franchise. Bethesda Game Studios director Todd Howard revealed that the game is in production, but no other details were revealed. With the epic task of following up Skyrim, here are a few changes and improvements that fans would appreciate in The Elder Scrolls VI.
Property Management
Building and furnishing your own house was a feature introduced in Hearthfire, a piece of downloadable content for Skyrim. The expansion allows you to buy land, construct a home using materials and furnishings, and then move in.
Bethesda Game Studios’ follow-up to Skyrim, Fallout 4, doubled down on the property management system introduced in Hearthfire. Players were able to build and manage their own settlements, constructing a highly individualized home base. Once their settlement grew large enough, NPCs would be able to move in and help tend the base.
Elder Scrolls VI, as a follow-up to both Skyrim and Fallout 4, should be expected to continue developing these already-established homestead systems. Allowing players to build and tend to their own customized homes would add depth to the role-playing nature of the game.
Improved Combat
Each game in the Elder Scrolls series has served to make combat feel more tactile and visceral. Early games, like Arena and Daggerfall, had players use mouse swipes and clicks to engage in melee and ranged combat. By Skyrim, the series evolved to feel more like a true action game, with a wide range of weapons and spells.
Still, there is room to further improve upon the combat system. In Skyrim, melee weapons are mainly separated into two categories, one-handed and two-handed, with animations and effects reused for the weapons in each. This means that it feels the same to swing an ax and a greatsword, or a dagger and a mace. In the sequel, it would be great if each individual weapon and spell felt wholly unique, and had unique attacks that made them more fitting to specific playstyles.
More Varied Quests and Dungeons
One of the main criticisms of Skyrim is that many of its quests feel very similar, pointing players towards a dungeon and telling them to defeat every enemy inside. While there are certainly exceptions to this rule, and some of Skyrim’s quests are incredibly memorable, it is often the case for quests outside of the main storyline. The dungeons in the game can also become repetitive, consisting mainly of the same four or five variations outside of some deliberately unique locales.
Elder Scrolls VI should endeavor to add a lot more variety to its quests and dungeons. Looking back at previous games in the series, particularly Morrowind and Oblivion, can provide examples of quests that feel radically different from each other. Those games also had repeated dungeon variations, but the variety of quests made each romp memorable.
New Engine
After using the Gamebryo engine to develop Morrowind, Oblivion and Fallout 3, Bethesda took that old engine and turned it into their own Creation Engine. That engine was then used to create Skyrim, Fallout 4 and Fallout 76.
While the Creation Engine has served Bethesda well, it is time for an upgrade. Each new game that uses Creation carries over several bugs, unnatural animations and technical limitations. A new engine would be the kind of game-changer that allows Elder Scrolls VI to surpass Skyrim, in terms of both hype and quality.
A Living, Breathing World
The Elder Scrolls series has always prided itself on pushing the boundaries of immersive open worlds. NPCs in Oblivion and Skyrim follow a daily schedule, sleeping at night and going about their business during the day. They have jobs, homes and backstories of their own.
Still, Bethesda has a long way to go if they want to create a truly realistic open world. In Skyrim, NPCs still do not react to player actions in any meaningful way, and only interact with each other in particular instances. The world of Elder Scrolls VI should be inhabited by NPCs that react to, and interact with, the world around them.
The Elder Scrolls series has existed at the forefront of action role-playing games for more than 25 years. Bethesda Game Studios has multiple highly-acclaimed games under their belt already, and they show no signs of slowing down. While we may not receive any details on Elder Scrolls VI for quite some time, fans should expect to see some level of innovation.