The Elder Scrolls VI

[Dryspace]

10 hours ago, Pesos said:

every race in Nirn actually share a single common ancestor

I think in Oblivion we learned that that common ancestor was a potato, right?

 

10 hours ago, Pesos said:

I'd much prefer TES VI take cues from Skyrim as opposed to Oblivion, because the latter was utter garbage on many levels

I know what you mean regarding Oblivion. What I consider to be garbage are the dungeons, possibly the creature design, and everything about the Oblivion gates and the Oblivion realm. There are many other faults, but not what I would call garbage. The only things that are done really well are the characters and quests, which far exceed Skyrim, imo.

 

But I don't want Bethesda to take cues from any game--I want them to take everything they've done well to date and iterate upon it, while tossing out what doesn't work, and not messing with what's not broken. Unfortunately, Bethesda has become yet another AAA developer that is willing to compromise the quality of its games for the chance at making super-huge profits instead of merely huge profits.

[DarksunDaFirst]

13 hours ago, Pesos said:

This is a very late and spooky reply, but every race in Nirn actually share a single common ancestor (except arguably the Argonians) - man and mer don't have separate origins. The more striking differences are usually down to Aedric or Daedric influence after the fact.

 

Moving on to more recent discussions...

 

I'd much prefer TES VI take cues from Skyrim as opposed to Oblivion, because the latter was utter garbage on many levels as a long time fan and required excessive modding just to salvage an enjoyable playthrough. That's not to say that Skyrim is without its faults, it has many also; a lot of the mechanics it brought to the table were potentially interesting but largely half-baked (houses anyone?). I'll be hoping that whatever the story ends up being in TES 6, that it stays on a more personal, individual level; both Oblivion and Skyrim were littered with battles and these "large scale" moments just fall flat in the game engine and the narrative suffers as a result.

Men and Mer do not have similar origins unless you're going back to the Dawn Era (when Mundus was being created).  Once you get into the Merethic Era do you see that the races were already separated - and for the most part knew nothing of each other until after the elves left Aldmeris for Tamriel.  Men themselves came from Atmora and Yokuda (Redguard).

As for the personal narrative - that's never been the case in Elder Scrolls.  The games themselves have always been about some sort of realm-changing, or world-threatening, event.  The first four games were literally about the ending of the 3rd Era, and the beginning of the end for the Empire ruled by the Septim Dynasty.

I personally think that if they took some of the story-telling elements of the 4th game and integrated it with some of the unique world-building of the 5th title, they would doing themselves a great favor.  Add in some of the character building from the 3rd title, and take lessons from the 5th title of combat mechanics and build something better for the next one.

My big thing is this:  Please let's not do another Men-based story or province.  Summerset Isle (Alinor), Valenwood, Elswyr, Argonia...any of them would be great.  

 

[Pesos]

9 hours ago, DarksunDaFirst said:

Men and Mer do not have similar origins unless you're going back to the Dawn Era (when Mundus was being created).  Once you get into the Merethic Era do you see that the races were already separated - and for the most part knew nothing of each other until after the elves left Aldmeris for Tamriel.  Men themselves came from Atmora and Yokuda (Redguard).

As for the personal narrative - that's never been the case in Elder Scrolls.  The games themselves have always been about some sort of realm-changing, or world-threatening, event.  The first four games were literally about the ending of the 3rd Era, and the beginning of the end for the Empire ruled by the Septim Dynasty.

I personally think that if they took some of the story-telling elements of the 4th game and integrated it with some of the unique world-building of the 5th title, they would doing themselves a great favor.  Add in some of the character building from the 3rd title, and take lessons from the 5th title of combat mechanics and build something better for the next one.

My big thing is this:  Please let's not do another Men-based story or province.  Summerset Isle (Alinor), Valenwood, Elswyr, Argonia...any of them would be great.  

 

The two Ehlnofey are the progenitors of both Man and Mer, is what I'm suggesting, and that's precisely that they are. You kind of need to go back that far away because it's where you pick up a lot of the fundamentals of how the Mundus works and how the races factor into that. Also lets you avoid traps like "all men are from Atmora" which is just Septim Empire propaganda to legitamize the line's claim to the throne, because Man originates from Tamriel; Atmorans and Yokudans are some of the groups that left, with the Nedes being those that remained - Imperials (Cyrods) and Bretons are descended from Nedic peoples and not Atmoran.

 

Perhaps personal was not the best choice of words here, so I'll try again, I'll just go with the blunt instrument since I can't find the right words for it at the moment. The game engine cannot handle large scale battles, so whenever the narrative dips into this sort of thing, it doesn't really work and at least for me, pulls one right out of the experience. Oblivion leans heavily into this, because of the whole full scale Daedric invasion of Tamriel but never really feels as much and the pivotal battle with Martin in Colovia(sp?) also falls flat pretty heavily. Like I said, Skyrim also suffers this pitfall with the civil war - part of the setting and intertwined into the main narrative. You can also compare Morrowind vs Oblivion here in that in one, the player is stopping the Oh sh*t moment actually happening, vs the Oh sh*t moment has already happened and now we're dealing with the consequences there of.

 

Summerset Isle would be a dope setting for the province but it's pretty much certain to be set in Hammerfell. Just a question of whether some/all of High Rock and/or NewNew Orsinium is included. It's odd to retread given Daggerfall already covered both provinces, but the area is pretty fun and sufficiently weird (unless they pull a TES IV and gut every interesting aspect of the setting from previous lore) - I'd have to hope for some Left-Handed Elf stuff thrown in.

Edited June 20, 2019 by Pesos

[Beato_dim]

10 hours ago, DarksunDaFirst said:

My big thing is this:  Please let's not do another Men-based story or province.  Summerset Isle (Alinor), Valenwood, Elswyr, Argonia...any of them would be great.  

Yeah. We had a Mer province in Morrowind, and it turned out great, and no one was turned off just because half of the creatures don't look too human.

[Clem Fandango]

Yeah Morrowind wasn't really a personal story it just found excuses not to set up moments that the game engine can't handle. So you're the military leader of the Ashlanders and three of the Great Houses but can't take any troops into Red Mountain because they'll get Corpus, the Great Houses aren't supposed to get along but the engine can't handle battles so they said the Tribubal made them handle their warfare secretly through the Morag Tong. Clever, but takes writing chops that the current team lacks and was still pretty lame. 

[Pesos]

I wouldn't lump the Dunmeri preference for secret war vs open war in the lame category, personally. The whole shebang is heavily ingrained into their culture and history, long before the Tribunal was a thing. If you divorce them of these ways and the House of Triune, you no longer get Chimer and then Dunmer; you end up at just another group of Altmer. Yawn.

 

Honestly though, I don't think I've ever really given Morrowind's narrative all that much thought after the fact. The Teachings of Vivec and CHIM in particular are far more interesting explorations.

 

If we ever get a Khajitti centric game, I'm hoping that it isn't set in Elsewyr and rather the Khajitti colony(ies) on the moon. Lets get proper weird and see if any of Reman Cyrodill's mannonauts descendants are still chilling up there while we're at it.

Edited June 21, 2019 by Pesos

[Dryspace]

On 6/19/2019 at 11:48 PM, Pesos said:

The two Ehlnofey are the progenitors of both Man and Mer, is what I'm suggesting, and that's precisely that they are. You kind of need to go back that far away because it's where you pick up a lot of the fundamentals of how the Mundus works...

Can one learn all of this information just from playing through all of the games? Or did you have to read supplementary material of one kind or another?

[Pesos]

It's been so long since Morrowind (primarily) and I've been thoroughly tainted by scholarly debate & supplementary material that I don't think that I could make the claim that the in game material lays it all out for those that seek it, in good faith.

 

 

I would say that The Monomyth and the Annotated Annuad are solid starting points. There may be more but nothing springs to mind of great importance at the moment.

[DarksunDaFirst]

14 hours ago, Pesos said:

 

If we ever get a Khajitti centric game, I'm hoping that it isn't set in Elsewyr and rather the Khajitti colony(ies) on the moon. Lets get proper weird and see if any of Reman Cyrodill's mannonauts descendants are still chilling up there while we're at it.

We would need Elsewyr.

Use the moon for DLC......hoping it could be the next Shivering Isles

[ilya]

Was just wondering about this. I'm thinking Bethesda might possibly improve in areas I prefer, like certain aspects of quest design. Some caveats..

 

San Andreas Oblivion was my first RPG. Nowadays I don't rate it or Skyrim as RPGs much because they both have very restrictive, unimaginative design compared to ones I've since discovered such as Baldur's Gate 2, Planescape: Torment, Fallout 2 etc, and, to various extents, 3Ds like Gothic, VTM:Bloodlines, Alpha Protocol, etc. I don't have the ancient interview but for Skyrim they briefly considered having a higher proportion of brain-dead "radiant" quests; I'm talking about the very shallow(er) ones with no noteworthy choices, the go-kill/fetch-something ones, AKA garbage non-roleplay design. I believe Obsidian's fairly superior design in New Vegas, which was in development partly alongside Skyrim, helped Bethesda decide to make a higher amount of "hand-crafted" quests, tho I use quotes there because Skyrim's supposedly "hand-crafted" quests are still mostly garbage i.e. dominated by linearity, lack of choices, primitive writing, cardboard characters, etc; and it's odd because Oblivion/Skyrim don't have an impressively ambitious amount of content to excuse the widespread shallowness, including the weak character development, and the weakly-conveyed "threat" of the dragons and war (neither of those feel like they have any real impact, and we don't get hardly any decent choices about them anyway). Since Oblivion, they've generally increasingly streamlined / saved themselves work - work that a lot of people probably wouldn't appreciate or notice, to be fair.

 

I'm unsure how relevant Fallout is here; however, Fallout 3 was Bethesda's first Fallout as well as my intro to the series, and I loved it (and Oblivion) back then. But after playing the OGs, I realised F3 was a big step down from F1 & 2, as a lot of their design was gutted or ditched (along somewhat similar lines as Morrowind --> Oblivion/Skyrim), and F3's story is partly a lazy rehash (well, in F1 we're sent out to solve the vault's water problem and come to face other stuff, while F2 has us find a GECK and we end up against the Enclave (in much more satisfying ways than F3)). Particularly, they dumbed down quest design from F2, despite the fact that F3 already has a low amount of quests and a small, shallow world (F2 has around 100 quests and a bigger + richer world). On a far smaller budget and less than 1.5 years development time, Obsidian tried to bring the series back to its roots, but Bethesda mostly ignored their efforts in favor of generally dumbing down even further in F4, and again F4 maintained the higher amount of quests similar to Skyrim, and likewise F4 has mostly sh*tty non-roleplay design like Skyrim, and worse. I didn't bother with F76, tho what I've heard makes me wonder if it has further lowered people's standards/expectations..

 

~

 

Yet I wouldn't be at all surprised if the potential positives outweigh for this . Firstly, I think they care a bit more about TES since it's originally their creation unlike Fallout. After being away from their flagship series (SP-wise) for so long, they might have some pent-up creativity, too. And maybe other big-shot developers' efforts have inspired them (for instance, Witcher 3 (which is an adventure game) has a larger amount of quests than Skyrim or New Vegas, and W3's quality of choice-&-consequence in quests is generally between those two games, and certain writing aspects (mainly in some side quests & expansions) are way above both). I've heard they chose to not build a properly new engine and if that's true then it's probably a very smart business decision - so modders can continue to flesh out and fix Bethesda's games for them for free, and Bethesda make money off them too of course, and they can also continue to implement mods in future development for even sweeter profit margins. On that note, I'm sure this new game will sell greatly regardless.

[Clem Fandango]

Not to keen for this game though it will probably have a mad castle building feature like the settlements for Fallout 4. That might be fun, not exactly waiting on baited breath for a game where I just sit in a pimped out castle pretending to be a feudal lord.

 

Bethesda has fallen off. Nobody wants to accept this. Honestly if you like the Elder Scrolls you're better off just playing Tamriel Rebuilt/Project Tamriel for Morrowind. Cyrodiil and Skyrim as they should have been. Province:Cyrodiil is about to release their version of Anvil and TR had a new release a few months ago that finished off the Indoril areas of the mainland and it was fantastic, the quests are not only a step up from past releases of TR, but from vanilla Morrowind.

[Craigsters]

I hope they take there time and  took notice at what happened with cyberpunk 2077  and don't rush  this 

[Len Lfc]

On 12/25/2020 at 6:38 PM, Craigsters said:

I hope they take there time and  took notice at what happened with cyberpunk 2077  and don't rush  this 

Tbf, it won't release until about 2024, anyway. They have an average release cycle of 3 years. And Starfield is due next year. But yeah, still... TES is probably the one series they would care about most. So I'd still have faith in them.

[EGA_6]

Just imagine, 2024 the possibilities:

Grand Theft Auto VI release (possible, if not then 2023)

The Elder Scrolls VI release (possible, if not then 2025)

The Witcher 4 announcement (possible, if not then 2025)

The next ND game release (possible, if not then 2025)

 

Edit: or maybe even 2025 lol

Edited December 27, 2020 by EliteGamer_6

[Len Lfc]

On 12/27/2020 at 10:30 PM, EliteGamer_6 said:

Just imagine, 2024 the possibilities:

Grand Theft Auto VI release (possible, if not then 2023)

The Elder Scrolls VI release (possible, if not then 2025)

The Witcher 4 announcement (possible, if not then 2025)

The next ND game release (possible, if not then 2025)

 

Edit: or maybe even 2025 lol

2023/24 might be the multiplayer Cyberpunk game. The next Witcher game wont be TW4, but set in that universe. And it might be a while after the Cyberpunk multiplayer, too. Who knows. Otherwise, yeah... could be a pretty good year or two.

[Mister Pink]

Rumours of an Elder Scrolls series for Netflix. Completely forgot there is Fallout for Amazon Prime. I'd say Netflix will definitely be interested in an Elder Scrolls Series. Seems win-win. Imagine getting a TV series and Elder Scrolls VI in the same year or thereabouts. 

 

https://wccftech.com/an-elder-scrolls-tv-series-is-rumored-to-be-in-production-at-netflix/

[K^2]

On 12/27/2020 at 2:30 PM, EliteGamer_6 said:

Just imagine, 2024 the possibilities:

Grand Theft Auto VI release (possible, if not then 2023)

The Elder Scrolls VI release (possible, if not then 2025)

The Witcher 4 announcement (possible, if not then 2025)

The next ND game release (possible, if not then 2025)

 

Edit: or maybe even 2025 lol

That's what we all thought about 2019, then 2020 with delays and it's been... Not great. I do not have high expectations for the next TES, concerned about next Witcher, and even future of GTA kind of looks uncertain.

 

I've been involved in one of the gaming disasters of this year, and while my team delivered on all goals, I'm left wondering if I could have done more. The problem is that the games have gotten so big that even a good studio can fail to deliver, let alone one with internal problems. Making games on the scale of Cyberpunk and GTA V takes a special kind of magic. R* had a very good run up to GTA V with all of its previous games building on top of each other. They also had resources to just brute-force through some of the open world problems, like having hand-crated LoD models for basically anything. Not being able to afford that and relying on automation instead is responsible for some of Cyberpunk's horrors, for example. But even with all of the resources, and keeping in mind that GTA VI can be the most expensive game ever made if R* throws all its weight behind it, it's been a very long time since they've made a GTA game from scratch. If it weren't for RDR2, I wouldn't expect anything good out of GTA VI at all, but even with that release I have some concerns. Despite some similarities in open-world tech between GTA and RDR, these are very different games, stressing different parts of the engine. There are definitely going to be parts of the studio going into GTA VI development cold and untested, but still expected to perform at the same level as veterans.

 

The others? I have zero faith in Bethesda pulling off TES VI, even following acquisition by MS. I'm not writing them off completely, and I will watch the news as it gets closer to release, but It's basically going to be a welcome surprise if TES VI ships and isn't crap at this point. Greater miracles have happened, of course, so I'm not saying we should burn this thread to the ground, or anything. I just don't see any reason to be optimistic right now. CDPR and next Witcher are also uncertain. CDPR is going to lose a lot of good people over the handling of Cyberpunk release. That's on top of people who'll be quitting due to exhaustion of crunch pre-release and being expected to fix the game post-ship. If CDPR tries to step back, and go into next Witcher with more caution, they can save it. But pre-production is already hurting. I would be willing to bet that there is a team in CDPR right now that was expecting to start getting devs rolling over to work on next Witcher already, but all the rollovers are getting delayed to fix Cyberpunk. That's not a death sentence to Witcher by any means, and in best case just means another Witcher game is further out than some of would hope, but it can also be demoralizing to the team and can impact final results. Just not a great starting point.

 

There are other interesting developments in the gaming world. And I'm sure we'll see some great games in '24 and '25. They just might not be the ones everyone's thinking of right now.

[Jason]

TES VI is a game that I have no real expectations for. Skyrim and Fallout 4 have aged like milk visually and mechanically, they need to literally go right back to the drawing board with TES VI and start over because if they base the game on Fallout 4 or Skyrim then they're in big trouble.

 

Starfield's gonna be a very important game for TES VI hopefuls I feel, if that fails to do anything special then I'd bet that TES VI will be the same.

[Mister Pink]

Update on the status of this game. It's still in the design phase. If I were to guess, this game wont be out until about 2026 at the earliest - unless Microsoft inject some more cash into Bethesda and to expand their teams. 

 

“It’s good to think of The Elder Scrolls 6 as still being in a design [phase]… but we’re checking the tech: ‘Is this going to handle the things we want to do in that game?’ Every game will have some new suites of technology so Elder Scrolls 6 will have some additions on to Creation Engine 2 that that game is going to require.”  - Todd Howard, 2021

 

Source

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gaming/news/first-pitched-game-lucas-2009-todd-howard-talks-indiana-jones/

[Space Cowboy]

Not surprised it isn't in full production yet, they are likely very busy to meet the proposed Starfield release date. Anyway, if the game enters production next year that should make the release date of around 2026 I'd say. Bethesda Game Studios games tend to have 3 - 4 years cycle, and given the scale of TES (which is definitely going to be their most ambitious game yet) it can maybe even release in 2027... wow. Crazy to think that by that time we will already have GTA 6, perhaps next Witcher game too...

 

On 6/29/2021 at 7:09 PM, Mister Pink said:

Update on the status of this game. It's still in the design phase. If I were to guess, this game wont be out until about 2026 at the earliest - unless Microsoft inject some more cash into Bethesda and to expand their teams. 

Worth noting that recently Microsoft said something along the lines that they have a new Fallout in development. Here: https://screenrant.com/xbox-game-exclusive-new-ip-unannounced-2021/

That could mean a lot of things - Fallout outsourced to Obsidian like with New Vegas (though unlikely given how many projects they are on already) or to some other studio...or just Bethesda got expanded. Otherwise I think that even pre-production for the next Fallout would at least be like 5 years away lol.

[Bigglo145]

Wait didnt we get a teaser trailer a couple years ago? Wtf they mean it isnt in production yet

[Jason]

The game was announced purely to soften the blow of the mobile game announcement, that's it. Same with the Starfield announcement.

 

Remember that Todd Howard him self said he only likes announcing/revealing games when they have something to show? That's how much they were terrified of Diablo Immortal levels of backlash from announcing a mobile Elder Scrolls before the real thing, so they CGI'd up a trailer to soften the blow.

 

"Design" phase could be anything though, they probably have a good idea on what they wanna do, the setting (Hammerfell?), there could even be assets already, a very early map etc, but there's still a lot of prototyping going on and trying stuff.

[pingli]

On 6/30/2021 at 12:36 PM, Jason said:

The game was announced purely to soften the blow of the mobile game announcement, that's it. Same with the Starfield announcement.

 

I thought the main reason Starfield and TES VI got announced early since people got worried they will only do MP games after Fallout 76. 

[Jason]

On 6/30/2021 at 2:00 PM, Pingley said:

I thought the main reason Starfield and TES VI got announced early since people got worried they will only do MP games after Fallout 76. 

 

Nah I think they made that pretty clear at the time? They brought Todd all the way to E3 to announce Elder Scrolls Blades, but they had the foresight to realise the announcement would tank HARD without a proper AAA announcement from BGS.

 

They were later proven to have done the right thing, cause Diablo Immortal happened without a proper Diablo 4 announcement and Blizzard got absolutely slaughtered at their own event and online.

[Mister Pink]

Some interesting potential leaks vis Skullzi who would be considered a great source. However he is emphatic he hasn't checked this info but it comes from someone very credible. Obviously, he gives a disclaimer at the start. Sounds very interesting! Especially