Just for fun: What I Would Change for Elder Scrolls VI
The track record of Bethesda regarding Elder Scrolls games is, like many things in life, not linear. Each new installments brought about positive new features, but also its fair amount of unique quirks or problems. Daggerfall, for example, was considered a huge undertaking due to the size of its world: it took one player nearly 62 hours to traverse the entire map. Some people still give this aspect of the game high amounts of praise. Despite this, though, it’s an unavoidable fact that this 62 hours will be filled to a noticeable extent with “dead and barren terrain”, since the game was released in 1996 and creating a huge world with interesting detail would have been something pretty much impossible. Size isn’t everything, folks.
Morrowind, considered by many (including myself, at this point) to be the best Elder Scrolls game, was also not without its problems. It certainly had the most unique and fleshed-out world, and its storytelling-through-game-progression was more interesting than the games that followed. Meeting Vivec, one of the living gods of Morrowind, for the first time feels like such an “OH SHIT” moment, for example; many of the quests had you running around Vivec City, and the city was designed so that Vivec’s temple (which was protected with a level 100 lock and trap) loomed over everything. You would see that temple pretty often, and I would look up at it from time to time during gameplay and know I would have to go in there at some point, but had no idea when and under what circumstances. This sort of building up of suspense through game progression and world design is just one of many aspects that makes Morrowind an enjoyable experience 17 years after the game was released. On the flip side, movement speed was obnoxiously slow and the combat mechanics — which were designed around “dice-roll” type chance like a table-top RPG — didn’t translate smoothly to a video game experience. Morrowind is likely the game I’ve written the most gameplay hint notes for: which, again, isn’t too surprising for a game so influenced by table-top RPGs (it just might not be everyone’s cup of tea).
Oblivion is definitely the red-headed stepchild of the bunch. It’s often viewed through rose-tinted glasses, but when it comes down to it, I’ve discovered that when pressed, most people like Oblivion due to three things: the Shivering Isles DLC, the Dark Brotherhood quest line, and Jeremy Soule’s soundtrack. It implemented many new modern features, like full voice acting and non-dice-roll combat mechanics. It just did so in a clumsy manner. Like Dragon Age II, it also suffered from copy-and-paste dungeons, but Oblivion suffers from this far more from Dragon Age II: the latter is story and character-driven, while the former is far more world exploration-driven. Oblivion’s fast travel system, which let you travel to any city right away before you even visited it, was an over-correction for Morrowind’s lack of one (I personally was mostly fine with it, though it made certain quest objectives rather tedious). The world of Cyrodiil also felt sterile compared to Morrowind’s.
Skyrim, the latest addition to the Elder Scrolls series, is yet another mixed bag. It’s a beautiful game to look at: even more so when the textures are enhanced or replaced via modding (I suppose I should praise the modders instead, then…?). Jeremy Soule’s soundtrack is, again, phenomenal. The voice acting is much improved over Oblivion’s. While the caves and dungeons are all made in a certain “loop” shape to simplify exit, no dungeon looks nearly as same-y as they did in the prior game. Blackreach is arguably one of the most unique locations to come out of an Elder Scrolls game since Morrowind.
Skyrim represented a simplification of many game mechanics that were present in both Morrowind and Oblivion. In those two games, you had to pick or create your own class at the beginning of the game. These classes came with a set of major and minor skills. In Morrowind, increasing skills in either set counted towards a level-up. While miscellaneous skills didn’t count towards a level-up, it was still sometimes a good strategy to increase them from time to time to gain attribute bonuses (ex: strength, intelligence, willpower, agility, etc), which you could select upon leveling up. In Oblivion, only major skills counted towards a level-up, while minor skills only affected attribute bonuses. Skyrim got rid of this system entirely. In Skyrim, any skill increase counted towards an eventual level-up. There was no distinction between major/minor/miscellaneous, and there was no class system. Upon level-up, you could use a perk-point to gain a single skill in a single skill tree. Because of all this, it was very easy to become either a jack of all trades/master of none, or a jack of most trades/master of all. Most of the time, though, people opt to eventually become a sneaky archer, as sneak attack bonus damage in the game is absurd. Simply put, there’s some balance issues going on here.
With all of this said, at this point, I believe it would be easier to discuss the flaws of Skyrim and the other games by discussing what I would personally fix for The Elder Scrolls VI.
- First and foremost…. a new engine. PLEASE. The current engine is absolutely ancient, and beyond that, there’s precedent for game studios changing engines even mid-development when they realized it was needed: Bioware did this with Dragon Age Inquisition, and while that game had its own problems, it was 100% playable and looked gorgeous (part of this was also due to the partially stylized design; the environments were saturated and bursting with color in a way that was positive, not garish or distracting). I know Bethany “small indie dev” Esda is likely going to keep being stubborn and use the same duck-taped-together engine to try and make this game, but that’s because Todd Howard hasn’t hired me yet.
- Bring back skills, attributes, and classes to a certain extent. Oblivion’s system was kind of broken and I needed a youtube tutorial to figure out Morrowind’s, but Skyrim was oversimplified, as I mentioned earlier. I liked the idea in Morrowind of having miscellaneous skills still contribute to attribute bonuses, but not to leveling up. This would be helpful for something like Smithing: in Skyrim it’s too easy to level this skill up, which then counts towards your level. It was very easy to gain like 3 levels from smithing alone, which of course doesn’t help with combat.
- In fact, though, I would either scrap Smithing as a skill or overhaul it. If you grind smithing you can craft the most powerful weapons and armor in the game, which makes finding loot feel way less rewarding (for comparison’s sake, in Morrowind, you had to FIND most of the more powerful armor and weapons in the game, so finding a piece of glass armor was exciting). It’s also way too easy to make tons of money fairly early on, and have nowhere to spend it. I would probably bring back the Armorer skill, make weapons and armor degrade over time again, and have your character find schematics for blacksmiths to craft for you like in Witcher 3 and (if i recall correctly) Dragon Age Inquisition.
- Better character writing and better handling of NPCs. In Skyrim, the only characters I could really bring myself to care about were Paarthurnax the dragon and Serana, a vampire from the Dawnguard DLC. No one else was compelling. At all. I recognize that Elder Scrolls games are more about world exploration, but I feel as though these worlds would be a lot more interesting with interesting characters (including canonically gay and gender nonconforming characters, especially if they don’t feel shoehorned in at the last minute)! Oftentimes, the player character in Elder Scrolls games is a very lonely role to play. You feel no attachment towards anyone, really, and no character ever seems to treat you in a realistic manner. This is NOT the same as requesting that every single NPC be an interesting character or even a “character” at all. Bethesda seems to believe that every NPC should be a unique character capable of being interacted with. This choice is partially why cities in games like Skyrim and Oblivion are so barren looking: it would be impossible to create a large city with these type of very specific NPCs. I would argue that having NPCs as sort of set props the way Dragon Age and the Witcher do wouldn’t detract from immersion at all, and in fact, might add to it in certain ways.
- A more unique world that incorporates past lore more readily. Both Skyrim and Oblivion are a lot more straightforward fantasy worlds than Morrowind, and I think that’s unfortunate. Vvardenfell (the setting of Morrowind) had a very sci-fi fantasy feel to it: the buildings looked bug-like (in fact, sort of like the Ohmu from Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind: which was likely no accident, since an area of the game was named after the movie), the flora and fauna were otherworldly, and the disappearance of the Dwemer (a race of elves) was tied to experiments with technology. It would be fantastic for The Elder Scrolls VI to be set in a non-human province of Tamriel like Valenwood or Blackmarsh to bring that sort of creativity back. Furthermore, the Elder Scrolls is a series with a huge amount of lore tied to it, but this lore is often not explored too deeply in game. If you don’t read the various books within Skyrim or Oblivion, you would have no idea about the full history of the conflict between the Empire and the Aldmeri Dominion, you would have far less of an idea how politics worked within Tamriel, you would know barely anything about the events that took place during Morrowind, etc. It would be helpful for these lore elements to be incorporated in the story itself instead of hidden away in a book most players will never read. With that said, you don’t have to go full weirdo Michael “Divayth Fyr and his cloned daughter-wives is definitely not a weird male fantasy” Kirkbride with things.
- Overhaul the guild system. In Skyrim, you can be the leader of every single guild in the game: you can be the grandmaster of the Thieves Guild, the Listener of the Dark Brotherhood, the Archmage of the College of Winterhold, etc. Even more silly than that, you can accomplish all of this without being particularly skilled in the things you would expect you would need to get ahead in each guild. In Morrowind, on the other hand, there were strict skill requirements and reputation levels that were needed in order to raise your rank. This mechanic would be very easy to bring back. If Bethesda really wanted to keep leadership as a potential reward for each guild, they could make it so if you complete the quest line for one guild, you are locked out of leadership for all other guilds. Again, this makes things more immersive; your character shouldn’t be able to be the leader of everything ever and your choice should have some consequences; you should have to think hard before choosing which guild to lead.
- A better portrayal of politics and social strife. Morrowind explored a lot of political and social elements within its world: the Dunmer use of slavery, the comprador nature of House Hlaalu, the encroaching colonialism of Cyrodiil, etc. Skyrim touched on the Altmer supremacist politics of the Aldmeri Dominion, and it’s something that could definitely be explored further in a new game. While I’m a communist, I sadly recognize it would be very unrealistic to ask for blatantly leftist politics and storytelling in a triple-A video game. At the very least, though, I want my character to be impacted by the world around them. In Skyrim, I could play as a Dunmer but be treated perfectly well in Windhelm, a notoriously reactionary human Nord city. That’s…. silly. The type of character I decide to play should be affected by the prejudices and politics of the world they find themselves in! On a final note, many games (including the Dragon Age series) slip up in their portrayals of racism by assuming a race must have done something really awful in the past for another race to oppress them. That’s bullshit! Colonialism is enough of a motive for a group of people to oppress another: no ‘past slight’ is needed. I don’t have super high hopes for video game writers to avoid this trope, but I might as well point it out here in the hopes that someone wises up.
These are just six of various things that could be done to revitalize the Elder Scrolls series, at least, in my opinion. There are other more technical issues that could be addressed as well, but story and character issues are more important to me. I’m likely missing a lot more (and forgetting some of my own ideas!). Definitely tell me some of your own! And in closing, Todd, hire me.
