Top 10 Things We Want from an Elder Scrolls 6

With the pending notion that a new Elder Scrolls is coming from Bethesda comes a whole new wave of amazing content. Skyrim was a Game of the Year seller that has sold over 20 million copies to date. That is astounding! Lots of people are just waiting for the next in the series after the slight disappointment that was Zenimax’s Elder Scrolls Online, so here are 10 things that people really want to be in Elder Scrolls 6:

10: A Changing World

            So the world of Skyrim is vast and amazing, but not much changes when you complete the main storyline. I have slain the great Alduin and travelled to Sovngarde and dined with the great divines, yet no one can recollect my adventures. I walk around and get treated as a normal person other than people talking about how I can speak with the voice of the dragons. Bandits still approach me like, “Alright, you better back off or you are gonna get it!”. Then I just slay them instantly.

            What we want with a changing world is for the repercussions to impact the whole world. If someone really important, say the EMPORER, dies then I want the entire country to be talking about it instead of the small area around the capital. We also want the world to change in the ability to build and destroy. If I want to go around killing all of the Stormcloaks I see and then murder Ulfric Stormcloak then I want the Stormcloaks to crumble to dust and someone siege the castle. Sure, the “story-line” needs to remain intact, but I don’t care about that. I want to destroy the world and have it reflect the actions I have done!

9: Dedicated Single-Player; Minuscule Multiplayer

            Many people have criticised Skyrim because it had an amazing game world that was almost perfect for multiplayer. Though the single-player was absolutely amazing, people have always dreamed of running around the world and doing quests together. There are a lot of complications with that as well, such as making the game a lot easier. There are things that could be done like adding in a Dark Souls-like multiplayer where the player summons their friends into their world to help on specific parts of the game like bosses and dungeons. This might work, but might not be as fun to play.

            We still want a dedicated and detailed single-player first, but adding in multiplayer to a normal Elder Scrolls game would give it much more replay-ability. To be able to hop into the world of Elder Scrolls with my friends in a semi-single-player world would add a whole new feel to playing the game.

8: A Richer, More Detailed World

            One of the things people don’t realise about Skyrim is that it procedurally generates missions to make sure that you will go and explore every area of the game world. It was a very nice way to get all of the time out of the game that you could.

            Adding onto this we would like to have to world come to life a little more than in previous versions of the game. An example would be to see random fights and warring factions fighting randomly over the game map. You turn around a corner and find a man that wants to sell you some ale, and then you go all across the map and find him again in a town with a shop after getting his business booming.

            We also want there to be some more detail in the world. There are many places in Skyrim where there is nothing to do. There needs to be something new and exciting at every turn to give the player a reason to explore every nook and cranny looking for treasure and secrets. There were definitely secrets, but I want to walk around and see patrols walking along the roads, or even see caravans with food and supplies going between cities (That actually have things produced in that city) that I can raid and pillage.

7: Better Combat Mechanics

            So the combat in Bethesda Games can be very satisfying at times. I remember nocking an arrow back and letting it fly towards my enemy only for the game to switch to a slow motion “arrow-cam” as the arrow took the face off of whatever I just hit. You could feel the weight of the arrow as it flew by, and it felt amazing. Especially after a one hit kill. This bit of satisfying combat does not need to change at all. We all love the kill cams and how the archery feels. What needs to change is the close-quarters combat. (And crossbows)

            When I am going through Skyrim as a tank melee build (Which let’s face it, archery is the easiest way to play the game.) I notice that when I get close to enemies and draw my sword and charge in. I think I am going to be blocking and knocking back and casting spells and shouting like a real Dragonborn should, and that’s what it looks like to me, but to anyone else, it looks like I am wildly flailing around hitting whatever I can. Especially when there are multiple enemies around. There seems to be no weight to the weapons when swinging them around. I don’t feel the effort it is taking the Dragonborn to swing around this huge battle-axe. I can’t see the weight of keeping the shield lifted when I am constantly blocking. (Like a noob.)

            Can we also please fix the crossbows, please? The way it fires looks so unnatural and the weight of the arrow feels like I am just shooting a really slow gun. Crossbows have a specific feel to them, and I would love to feel that when firing from it.

6: Better AI/Follower AI

            Alright if there is one thing in the Elder Scrolls that needs fixing it’s the AI system. I remember many times when playing Skyrim and even Fallout 4 when I would be sneaking around a corner and there would be an enemy right there. I would walk around the corner and be directly in their line of sight, but they would just turn around and walk away as if nothing had ever happened. Also, there were times I would kill their best friend and they would start to search for me. I would hide and they would search for me for about, I don’t know, 5 SECONDS before going, “Oh, I guess it was nothing” and they go back to sitting on the side of that pillar while their friend is dead at their feet. Come on Bethesda. You can do better than that. We should at least have some kind of alert mode where you can’t stealth attack him or something. Or where he has a heightened alertness and can see you and hear you faster this time, and don’t make him relax. Keep him ready for something else that might come. Just saying that the enemies are alerted on the screen isn’t going to cut it anymore Bethesda.

            We need an AI that can match our own combat skills and be amazingly hard to beat on higher difficulties. We don’t just want them to do more damage and us less while holding the block button for hours and attacking wildly with no purpose. We want them to be smarter and use more advanced tactics so that we have to adjust our play-style when playing on higher difficulties. We can also improve the intelligence of the guards. Please, I do not want to accidentally shoot a guard while fighting a dragon and then suddenly all of the guards immediately ignore the dragon and start attacking me. Or when I hit a chicken and the town goes absolutely insane. With that chicken note, please also make it so that if I do something in a spot where only a few people can see me, that only those people will get angry at me. If I am nowhere near the lumber mill, I do not want Faendal to come running with his bow and arrow when he should have no idea what I did.

            As well as AI in general, follower AI still needs to be fixed. Even in Fallout 4, I find myself yelling at my companions to get out of my way. They also tend to get in the way of my fighting. Especially as an archer, it is really annoying when my tank is always in the way of my arrow. Please make followers essential NPC’s who can be downed but not killed. Or at least not killed by us. I found it very annoying when I went to kill a giant and accidentally killed Lydia, who was my wife in the game at the time. Whoops doesn’t really cut it.

5: Better Dialogue Options

            Fallout 4 did a good job at addressing the question of whether a voiced protagonist would be a good thing to have, so now there needs to be one in Elder Scrolls. Now I would have liked there to be multiple options when picking a voice for my character, but I understand how hard it would be to do that. So many lines! There are a few things about the dialogue options that could be improved though.

            There are moments when reading the dialogue choices in Skyrim and I don’t really feel like they are something a Nord or Khajit would say. Nords are large and well-adjusted to the cold. They would have a harsher way of speaking than an Imperial, who would be more skilful in his choice of words, or a High-Elf who would think he is above everyone else. There should always be a variety, but if the specific race usually has a generic way of speaking, then we would like for there to be dialogue options to go with that. Also the style of speak. Khajits, for instance, speak in the third person, but if your character is a Khajit, all of the dialogue options are all the same. With the huge budgets going out and years to make new games, this needs to change.

            Also, will someone please, for the love of god, let me see the ENTIRE dialogue option when speaking to the person. Not like Fallout 4. That was a big gripe that many people had with the dialogue system and frankly should have been done better. I’m looking at you Bethesda.

4: Physics…Please

            So if you come up to a mountain side and you look up to see the mountain, it really takes out of the immersion when you can walk up to the wall on your horse and just trot up the mountain side. Please Bethesda, fix the physics of your game. I realise that the engine is out of date, and I have a later number for that, but seriously? I know from doing it that it is very simple to add a few lines of code and parameters to make it so that if the incline goes above a specific degree than my horse will not be able to trot over it. I remember many times where I was just completely taken out of the game due to the horse suddenly spazzing out and then I would be completely vertical on the mountain. Let’s fix this now Bethesda.

4.5: Better Transportation Options

            Speaking of horses, there needs to be some other way to travel around the map other than getting on a horse and trotting around. If I can get a carriage that has tons of storage on it and ride it all the way to the capitol to sell some goods, that would be great. Oh and please don’t over-do it with the fast travel. Make it as minuscule as possible. I don’t want to feel like I need to use fast travel to get around. This also plays into the detailed world that we mentioned a few numbers back, but we should be able to travel anywhere in the map and find something. If that happens then the part about fast travel should just see itself out the door.

3: Better Questing System

            Have you ever felt like you needed to join every single faction in Skyrim to experience all of the different quest types in the game? I did too. It was very annoying that I couldn’t have an assassination mission without joining the Brotherhood. It would be much better if we could walk around and talk to people, and then because of our immense sneak skills, someone pulls us aside and asks us to assassinate someone. Then if we refuse he tries to kill us so we don’t tell the authorities. Then we could knock him out, get away, and go tell the guards, or just kill him. This type of questing would be much more immersive and give more of a satisfaction with the player after they make a decision. Like it had mean to it.

            Also it would be great to have a main hub where you can accept missions from like the notice boards in The Witcher 3. NPC’s could put up letters or bounties or things like that and the player could just take them. Then he either goes to the person or the Jarl to complete the quest. Fetch quests are fairly boring though, so let’s please mix it up a bit Bethesda. I don’t want to go get a glowing red sword 10 times or pick flowers and herbs for someone else to get 15 pieces of gold.

            Also a more realistic way to acquire quests would be nice. A little girl isn’t going to just run up to me and give me a quest. That’s not right. I should get quests from mages in guilds and people who are likely to give out a quest, not some random NPC on the street. Going back to the notice board, that would be a perfect way for me to just walk up and take on a quest more realistically.

2: Better Code and Graphics Engine

            Elder Scrolls, and Fallout frankly, needs a new graphics engine. I have seen numerous people on forums saying that Fallout 4 is using the same engine and only looks slightly better than a copy of New Vegas with a few mods installed. In the day and age of photo-realism and graphical capabilities skyrocketing, this should not be the case. No, I am not asking for photo-realistic graphics in Elder Scrolls, but there definitely needs to be a new engine to extend the look and feel of Tamriel. Bethesda has been using the same game engine since Morrowind in 2002. If anything needs updating, the Engine is it. Many people will not have seen this unless it was really obvious, but the better the graphics get, the more people are starting to notice.

            I have seen things such as flying sabretooth tigers, players walking on top of their horses like a treadmill, and the infamous giants who would launch anything not nailed to the ground into space with their overpowered clubs. It is true that many people love these things because it is “just like Bethesda” to have these kinds of bugs and glitches, but with games like The Witcher 3, the Elder Scrolls franchise needs to catch up to the times. Come on Bethesda.

1: Official Mod Support

            Sorry other PC gamers, but this has been the most requested thing to add into new Elder Scrolls games. With the new system specs of the PS4 and Xbox One, the games would be able to support a good modding community. Now I am not talking about full mod support, as that would be ridiculous. Even these systems could not handle the 200 mods that people install onto their PC versions of the game, but there are many people out there who have created new lands, dungeons, and quest-lines that could quadruple the amount of time spent in the game for console players. PC players will put their normal 500 hours in the game. (I have 467 hours clocked into Skyrim alone.)

            This could also help to balance the game. When Skyrim came out, the game was glitch as all hell. The way that the PC community handled it was amazing. There were tons of fixes within weeks of the games release on PC, but the console players had to wait a long time for Bethesda to release updates that fixed major issues. Even after that there were still major bugs and glitches that needed to be fixed. Mod support for consoles would allow the community to help Bethesda in fixing their game.

            One more note is that if the game includes multiplayer of any sort, we may want an option that turns off multiplayer when mods are active unless the other player has the same mods installed.

            

            So these were 10 things that people really want to see in a new Elder Scrolls game. With the rumors of Bethesda working on 3 new titles, we are hoping that our good old Elder Scrolls is one of them. Just hope that Bethesda learns how to release games that are not so buggy and that we get a better looking engine. Tell me in the comments what you think should be changed in a new Elder Scrolls. Should they make the entire continent full of chickens? Tell us in the comments below.