It's been more than eight years since Bethesda released The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim, and it will likely be several more before The Elder Scrolls 6 is in players' hands. In all that time, game design has evolved to the point where some of Skyrim's choices would be no longer be accepted by today's gaming public. This means The Elder Scrolls 6 needs to improve on a few key features in order to live up to expectations.
Even all these years later, Skyrim is an enjoyable RPG, providing player freedom and opportunities for "emergent storytelling" not seen in most other games. Still, there is a lot about Skyrim that doesn't make sense, be it individual plot points or elements of its game structure. The freedom the game affords means it loses out on some of the things a more structured experience provides, like story moments that feel epic and climactic.
The Elder Scrolls 6 announcement trailer didn't give fans much to dig through, meaning the game is likely far from ready to release, but new Bethesda job listings suggest The Elder Scrolls 6 could be entering full production. The long wait means the developer has had plenty of time to improve on Skyrim's faults. Here here are a few things Bethesda needs to get right for The Elder Scrolls 6.
The Elder Scrolls 6 Needs A New, Colorful Setting
Skyrim's titular slice of Tamriel is a lovely setting for an RPG. It's full of dank tombs, ancient ruins, and quiet mountaintops that hide plenty of hidden locations not found by many players. It's also fairly grounded in reality, however, sticking mostly to Earth-like landscapes and structures, and its color palette is dominated by browns and grays. It's been theorized that The Elder Scrolls 6's location could be Hammerfell or High Rock, but, regardless of region, Bethesda should spice things up with more fantasy-inspired locales. The series' lore has already provided more interesting landmarks, like Valenwood's treetop city of Falinesti, which physically moves around the region throughout the year. The Elder Scrolls 6 needs to take inspiration from the franchise's more outlandish ideas and implement them in a world that goes beyond Skyrim's fantasy-realism.
The Elder Scrolls 6 Needs More Compelling Storytelling
Because everything in Skyrim is viewed through the player-controlled camera, many of the game's biggest story moments felt flat and anticlimactic. When the Dragonborn kills Alduin in Sovengarde at the story's conclusion, the player simply stands there, watching the dragon's body explode, after which a guy walks up to them, congratulates them, and sends them back to reality. At certain moments in gaming's history, choreographed cutscenes have been looked down on as immersion-breaking, but The Elder Scrolls 6 shouldn't be afraid to take control away from the player at times in order to tell a better story. And for non-climactic moments, implementing something like The Witcher games' NPC conversations - with dialogue choices and multiple camera angles - would help make talking to people a less boring affair.
The Elder Scrolls 6 Needs Better Combat & Animations
Perhaps Skyrim's biggest flaw is its outdated combat and character animations. Everything has a stilted, inhuman quality to it, like the characters are being controlled by puppet strings. The Elder Scrolls 6 rumors suggest Bethesda is working on a new engine for the game, so that may mean there's potential for more fluid animations and varied attacks. Bethesda could look to games like Chivalry: Medieval Warfare, Mordhau, and Dying Light for examples of more interesting first-person melee combat.
The Elder Scrolls 6 Needs No Microtransactions
Ah, what a time it was when The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion's horse armor DLC was the most controversial example of a video game company ripping its players off. Now, the industry is full of paid microtransactions, cosmetic and otherwise, and Bethesda's insistence on pumping the infamous Fallout 76 full of in-game purchases - including the Fallout 1st subscription service fiasco - doesn't bode well for the publisher's treatment of the next Elder Scrolls game. Bethesda's Todd Howard has said the company is designing The Elder Scrolls 6 to be played for a decade, but it's hard to believe that won't come with some sort of live-service catch. Here's hoping Bethesda will treat its apocalyptic games' sister franchise better.