Gamebolt - Six Things We Want in Elder Scrolls VI

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Jake Dekker of Gamebolt published a new article where he lists six things his site wants to see implemented by Bethesda in the next Elder Scrolls game.

My imagination runs wild when I think of all the possibilities for the next The Elder Scrolls game. Each entry in the series offers huge open worlds teeming with life, tons of customization options, and, of course, hundreds of hours of content. Every game in the series lets the player create a brand new character from scratch and forge their very own story in the world Bethesda Game Studios creates. Despite all of this great content there is still more I’d like to see in the next entry. Here are five things I would love to see in The Elder Scrolls VI.
More information.
 
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How about trading a half dozen superficial buy-and-decorate-your-home quests for a more solid house-building experience? Or replace a bunch of vanilla class-based guilds with more interesting political organizations? Or provide a real survival experience with food, water, clothing, and exposure hazards? Or providing a smaller number of companions that each have much greater depth? Or give us a long, extended journey into the dangerous underground realms? Or make the PC something different, like a shape-shifting agent of a Daedric Prince?
 
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How about trading a half dozen superficial buy-and-decorate-your-home quests for a more solid house-building experience? Or replace a bunch of vanilla class-based guilds with more interesting political organizations? Or provide a real survival experience with food, water, clothing, and exposure hazards? Or providing a smaller number of companions that each have much greater depth? Or give us a long, extended journey into the dangerous underground realms? Or make the PC something different, like a shape-shifting agent of a Daedric Prince?

You mean factions like they had in Morrowind?!! Blasphemer. Praise Bethesda and do some mods with bugfixing, as Bethesda could never be bothered with such trivialities since Daggerfall times.

Now seriously. Morrowind had interesting factions (and meaningful), the environment was harsh in certain areas and you had to search some cover, you had levitation (yes you read that right, you could fly), open cities (yup, no need for mods, the cities were truly open), uber jump (you could jump over the whole continent if you wished), spellcrafting (true joy for a breton character), could kill gods, take their souls and make an uber enchantment for your armor/weapon of choice (Azura Star artifact for soul trapping and pretty much any god in the game marked as non-essential, Vivec being one for example - do his quest, kill the bugger)

Quests for factions in Morrowind were like walking on a tightrope. Most of them were conflicting. But you could find a way to do them and remain in all the guilds (yeah, not intended, but gamers always do the most amazing things)

Now, if i'm interested in something, that's the fate of dwarves. You meet in Morrowind one that claims he's the last of the race. But you don't hear much except they've suddenly disappeared.

As for real survival experience and better companions: try Fallout New Vegas on hardcore. House building wise, the Hearthfire DLC is doing an okay job.
 
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1. Improved A.I for a a more immersive experience.
2. More of a hand-crafted world (dungeons,quests,loot) and less generic enviroment and story.
3. Improved combat (and an option for Gore), something like: Dark Messiah, Dishonored, Chivalry for melee and like Lichdom for magic.
4. Better integration of the main quest with the (open world) optional side content and balancing (so that if you do most of the side content the main quest won't become trivial).
5. More interactive world where physics has more impact on the gameplay with dynamic weather.
6. Different options to resolve quests based on your character build.
 
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For some reason, I suspect that the Dwemer will return in ES 6. Everything in Skyrim suggest a thoroughly sadistic, and arrogant(Azura and the box) culture. The return of Nirn's most technologically advanced race would definitely shake things up.

The biggest question for me is how do they intend to handle the Dragonborn? Common sense dictates that he/she becomes emperor, or empress. They have the allegiance of one dragon -Odahviing- and, if Paarthurnax's survival is made cannon, allies amongst one of the dragon factions.

Knowing Bethesda, they'll come up with some half-assed, lore breaking explanation to avoid a canonical ending. Still, this is the first time that I remember their being so specific about the main characters appearance in all of their promotional material. Knowing them, they'll have the Dragonborn kill off all dragons, only to be felled by a Thalmor assassin while eating some bread.

Ah well, taking into account the series evolution from Morrowind to Skyrim, it'll probably be the dumbest game in the series. I'm not anywhere near as excited as many seem to be for Fallout 4. While buggy as hell, New Vegas raised the bar as far as the writing is concerned. Unless they've hired some new talent, the only thing we can expect from Bethesda is; an incredible world to explore, two dimensional characters, and a dull but serviceable story.
 
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Stop with all the hand-holding.

Seriously, since Oblivion, TES feels like it's primarily being aimed at mainstream gamers who have never played an RPG before. You're basically guided every step of the way and shown exactly where you need to go at all times.

Start by not having so many quest markers and arrows on the compass that point out where everything is. Whatever happened to the player finding things himself?

Of course those things can be modded out, but why not make them optional to begin with?
 
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No level scaling

Longer main quest with better writing and C&C

Guild quests that are much more challenging both in terms of combat and puzzles

More C&C in general

Challenging combat on the harder difficulty levels

Expanded stealth options

Elaborate thievery

Exclusive guild system with highly expanded power/ranking and flavor

Expanded underwater gameplay with lots of secrets to find

Fewer dungeons/locations but with more detail (50-100 dungeons with 4-8 times the detail of the ~400 in Skyrim)

Puzzles and traps that pose actual challenge

Less generic loot

More scenery variety

Less samey visuals for dungeons

Small scale cooperative multiplayer (2-8 players)

Customizable PC-centric UI for PC version

Make the compass/quest markers optional and have the quests reflect that with better and less generic descriptions

Expanded crafting system and make crafting entirely separate from power progression

Expanded alchemy system

Expanded magic system

More active perks and powers
 
That they managed to do what they wanted to do in Skyrim without managing to do it.
 
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I want a more diverse skill set. Each iteration should be adding new skills, not taking them away. More adventure, exploration and vague hints of interesting places - less combat/quest simulator. Will never happen though.
 
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in addition to the above: attributes.

Attributes make for more distinct characters. And my favorite combat mod had to make do without them.
 
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Not to be the party pooper here, but I think most of the members seem to be delusional.

The TES series never rocked my boat, but I think it is obvious that the reason they sell gazillions of each iteration is the fact that they have been lowering their standards towards the LCD since Daggerfall.

Morrowind is kind of a curious game, because it inherited a lot of Daggerfall's best elements, but didn't add anything substantial besides pretty gfx.

And it was downhill from there. Removing elements and simplifying gameplay. Look, Skyrim is a more fun game than Oblivion, but by no means a better CRPG. And this is why they are successful. Noone except us cares for CRPG virtues in a TES game. Noone.
 
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Not to be the party pooper here, but I think most of the members seem to be delusional.

The TES series never rocked my boat, but I think it is obvious that the reason they sell gazillions of each iteration is the fact that they have been lowering their standards towards the LCD since Daggerfall.

Morrowind is kind of a curious game, because it inherited a lot of Daggerfall's best elements, but didn't add anything substantial besides pretty gfx.

And it was downhill from there. Removing elements and simplifying gameplay. Look, Skyrim is a more fun game than Oblivion, but by no means a better CRPG. And this is why they are successful. Noone except us cares for CRPG virtues in a TES game. Noone.

Please explain how a better game in the RPG genre is not a better RPG, and why it matters.

As for being delusional, does that mean people can't want something without actually expecting it to happen?
 
I think it may be possible for a TES to have more options and still be just a fun game. However, I also think that would involve a gamble, something Bethesda would never do in these times.
 
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Six? I want just three.
- a story
- elder scrolls
- no endless respawns and lelvel scaling

Wait, wait! No. I want just one:
- The patch.
 
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No level scaling

Longer main quest with better writing and C&C

Guild quests that are much more challenging both in terms of combat and puzzles

More C&C in general

Challenging combat on the harder difficulty levels

Expanded stealth options

Elaborate thievery

Exclusive guild system with highly expanded power/ranking and flavor

Expanded underwater gameplay with lots of secrets to find

Fewer dungeons/locations but with more detail (50-100 dungeons with 4-8 times the detail of the ~400 in Skyrim)

Puzzles and traps that pose actual challenge

Less generic loot

More scenery variety

Less samey visuals for dungeons

Small scale cooperative multiplayer (2-8 players)

Customizable PC-centric UI for PC version

Make the compass/quest markers optional and have the quests reflect that with better and less generic descriptions

Expanded crafting system and make crafting entirely separate from power progression

Expanded alchemy system

Expanded magic system

More active perks and powers

You basically described most of the stuff that Morrowind did right:biggrin:
 
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You basically described most of the stuff that Morrowind did right:biggrin:

Morrowind did many things right and many things wrong :)

Skyrim is still the best of the bunch, in my opinion - but that doesn't mean everything about it is "right".

All games can be improved, and TES games have always suffered from severe flaws - which is only natural, given their scope.
 
I would like to see boat trips through Black Marsh, with possible encounters with giant swamp sharks and various nasties that are present in those waters.

A system like Final Fantasy 11 had would be very cool. I doubt they'd do that, but I can dream. :)
 
Three things only - since most of the rest can be accomplished via modding - which is the best way to approach the "I wish the game had this thing that only 100 people care about" types of things.

Better combat system. The ES system is active but it's incredibly primitive and simplistic. Compare ES to Witcher and it's like night and day. Even compare ES to KoA. I guess some love ES combat but I've always found their combat to be pretty "meh" (along with their character development systems being wonky and too simplistic).

EVERY one of their games (fallout/ES) ends up having mods to make better female bodies and faces (that are among the most popular mods), so why not just make them not suck to begin with? It works for Witcher - just add the option to have super porn model females from the start and save many of us having to do that essential mod. You can keep the ugly and hideous female bodies/faces in the game for people who like women to look like men - just add options. Options are good. Sorting thru the various body type mods and gear mods to line up with those mods just so your female character doesn't look like a less muscular guy with every bethesda game gets tedious.

Co-op. An ES MMORPG was unnecessary and unwanted (by many). But if you could enjoy your modded ES world and your gameworld that retains the immersion, impact of decisions, etc, with one or a few friends, that would make the experience that much more fun (for those of use who love co-op).

Having a game you can play for 100, 200, or more hours is pretty cool. Sharing that with a few good friends is cooler. "sharing" it with thousands of spewing dudes named xXLegolasXx, waiting for repops, seeing npcs swarmed with players, seeing players running all over your screen like locusts - not as cool - tolerable in a typical MMORPG where it's expected - not as tolerable in elder scrolls where the immersion and quality of experience has a higher bar.
 
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With the exception of co-op-I prefer single player RPG's- I agree with pretty much everything posted. A major change that I'd like to see is an advancement in technology.

Tamriel has been stuck in the middle ages for more than a millennia. At the very least, they should progress to a Renaissance level of tech. Imagine tooling about in da Vinci like contraptions.
 
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