Speculation is rampant over what possible changesThe Elder Scrolls 6could make in order to justify its absurdly long development window. It’s been 14 years since the last true The Elder Scrolls game, and even the most optimistic industry insiders putThe Elder Scrolls 6at least two years down the line. The leaks and official announcements over the years have confirmed that the game is still using the same engine that Bethesda developers have come to be known for, and a full shift to something like Unreal Engine 5 is simply not in the cards.
Piecing together clues from updates and previous trends, it seems more and more likely that, despite what many want,The Elder Scrolls 6will likely not stray too far off course from previous games in the franchise, especially consideringhow poorly Bethesda’s most recent venture into the unknown—Starfield—went.
The Skyrim and Oblivion Open-World Formula Works, and Bethesda Knows It
The Elder Scrollsformula is far from perfect, but it’s one that has a guaranteed audience built in. There arevery few games that attempt to create aSkyrimorOblivion-style open-world action RPG, and for good reason. The amount of time, resources, and dedication that goes into realizing that level of scale is astronomical. It’s easy to see why most studios prefer smaller projects; it’s wiser to make a game that’s fun to play but smaller instead of a game that’s bigger but empty.
The scope ofSkyrimandOblivionis just one part of the puzzle, however. Whether Bethesda openly admits it or not, one of thebiggest reasons for the popularity behindThe Elder Scrollsgames is the modding scene. One needs to look no further thanThe Elder Scrolls Online, a game that fundamentally cannot be modified because of its online nature, to realize how big of a role modding plays forThe Elder Scrollsgames.ESOhas just as much lore, questlines, and areas to explore asSkyrim, if not more, but whereSkyrim’s player count remains steady after a decade,ESOconstantly has to struggle to barely keep up. And while a part of it is because of the different nature of the two games, one being an MMO and the other a single-player RPG, moddability plays a huge role as well.
What makesSkyrima ‘forever’ gameisn’t that it’s the best at what it does but that it gives modders a canvas to let their imaginations run wild. There are a thousand and one ways to playSkyrim, and only one of them was developed by the studio.The best thing Bethesda ever did was get out of the way.Giving the modding community as much freedom inThe Elder Scrolls 6as they had inSkyrimandOblivionis a no-brainer.
Bethesda has confirmed thatThe Elder Scrolls 6is being developed using the Creation Engine 2, an updated version of what was used to makeSkyrim. While this engine is definitely more capable than its predecessor, it’s built on top of it, uses the same file structure, and relies on many of the same processes to function. The Creation Kit can also be made for this engine, as seen withStarfield, which means it’s just as moddable asSkyrimandOblivion. Considering the overwhelmingly positive reception ofOblivion Remastered, Bethesda may choose to wrap a visual layer of Unreal Engine 5 on top of the Creation Engine 2. This would allowThe Elder Scrolls 6to be just as modder-friendly asSkyrimandOblivionwhile making use of UE5’s incredible visual prowess.
Starfield’s Procedural Generation Was a Failed Experiment
One of the things that madeSkyrimgreat was that traveling from point A to point B felt like anything could happen. Stuff like random enemy encounters, a Thalmor prison transport, or a new cave with great loot inside weren’t exceptions but the rule. In order to make procedural generation work,Starfieldstripped most of that out of the equation and was the worse off for it. Part of it was Bethesda being experimental, and part of it was to keepStarfield’sidentity separate fromFallout. Regardless, it didn’t work then, and it won’t work now. Bethesda’s strength has always been handcrafting interesting locations to explore, and that’s the directionThe Elder Scrolls 6is likely to take.
