Elder Scrolls VI Announced. And That's About It!

I had honestly given up hope and stopped watching their conference, but here it is, a teaser for Elder Scrolls VI!

Yeah, see that? Lots of details about...

Ok, so we got basically nothing except confirmation that it's actually going to happen. As a big Skyrim fan, I've been waiting for... seven years now for a new game in the main series. With Elder Scrolls Online seeming to take up much of their brand energy, I started to worry that I sounded like one of those people constantly asking for Warcraft 4.

But it's coming! So that's a relief.

Now, the question is what its story will be about and where it's set. Given the landscape, I'd guess High Rock, the land of the Bretons, as it has a fairly Ireland-esque look to it (I was hoping for a desert-like Hammerfell.) But who really knows?

Given that Skyrim could end in various different ways - with the province either exiting the Empire or remaining part of it - I wonder how they'll decide the "canon" ending, or if they'll keep Skyrim's state intentionally vague.

Should Open-World Games Have a "Main Quest?"

Fallout is, unsurprisingly, a game that is coming up in my thoughts more recently - not only was Fallout 4 just announced, set in my own hometown no less, but I also saw Mad Max: Fury Road not too long ago, so the idea of a post-apocalyptic landscape is kind of... not really zeitgeisty, but something that I've been thinking about.

Fallout 3 was a great game, but it had its flaws. And one of the biggest flaws (spoilers for a rather old game) was the way it ended. After tracking down your father's water-purification project, the Enclave tries to sabotage you and you basically are forced to sacrifice yourself in order for the project to start up - you're bathed in radiation and die. This was made all the more frustrating by the presence of a supermutant follower, who is immune to radiation. Wouldn't it be far easier to just have him enter the code?

I'm led to understand that some DLC fixed this - allowing you to recover afterward - but it's really an odd idea in the first place - to have an open-world game... well, end. Games often have linear narratives, but this makes sense for some genres more than others. In linear games, it makes sense to have a story that hits plot points in a straight line. But the open-world game is more about setting than plot. Plot and characters inform that setting, to be sure (all the elements of storytelling are pretty inextricably linked anyway,) but the core engagement with your open-world games is a sense of freedom and exploration. The danger of having a main quest is that you essentially tell players "you can do anything here! But remember that if you aren't on this single path, you're on a side quest."

Now perhaps that isn't so bad. In Skyrim, I've created assassin-type characters who really just do the Dark Brotherhood and Thieves' Guild chains and basically feel complete (Dark Brotherhood especially.) But I think there are ways to tell compelling stories that don't push a single one to the forefront.

Probably the most culturally relevant fantasy work at the moment is George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, which you probably already know is the series of books upon which HBO's Game of Thrones is based (though the show and books are deviating more as the show has caught up to or passed Martin's writing.) While there's every possibility that the various plot threads will ultimately entwine to give us the series' endgame, for much of its run there have been wildly different events going on - all of which are certainly important.

The two most important supernatural forces in the story are separated by thousands of miles. Jon Snow, up at the Wall, is desperately trying to work out a peace deal with the Wildlings because of the necromantic Others (White Walkers in the show.) Meanwhile, Daenerys Targaryen achieved a miracle in bringing three fossilized dragon eggs back to life, and has her legitimacy as a conqueror and liberator backed by her status as "Mother of Dragons."

These are both hugely important things happening in the world, but the meat of the series has been more concerned with political intrigue in King's Landing. But that's not all - you've also got the chaos in the Riverlands, possible treachery in the Iron Isles (something the show hasn't dealt with all that much,) and a religious order of badass, terrifying assassins across the sea in Braavos.

The point is, Game of Thrones isn't just one big fantasy epic - it's like ten of them all happening at once.

And an open-world game could work that way.

World of Warcraft actually manages this, somewhat as a consequence of its periodic structure. Each expansion has focused the story somewhat, but generally, we move on to fairly different threats each time we go somewhere new. The Lich King and Deathwing were both existential threats to life on Azeroth, yet they felt very different and involved totally different "major players."

The leveling experience in the old world, even post-Cataclysm, really embodies this idea - you'll start in your own racial starting zone (and the fact that there are so many allows you to have quite different experiences even early on,) and while you can see how the various plot threads are connected, you can have a pretty different kind of adventure depending on where you go.

Is this all that different from how games like Skyrim work already? Perhaps not. The question is whether games would work if the makers tore up the signs that said "this way to most important plot." Does the main quest act as a crutch - a little linear game to provide structure lest people be overwhelmed by the freedom they're given? And would taking that crutch away make them fall? It's certainly possible, and I'm definitely an armchair game designer here.

But it might be cool to play a game where you really don't know which of the world-ending threats that pop up is the biggest one.

Where Next in Tamriel?

I've gone back and started playing a lot of Skyrim lately. I've played through both sides of the Civil War quest chain, which is a very well-designed match of grey-and-gray morality. Both sides have excellent points, and both sides also have some serious problems - for example, either way the war turns out, either Markarth or Riften is going to wind up with a Jarl who's incredibly corrupt.

I haven't played the Elder Scrolls Online (though now that it's just a buy-once thing and it works on Macs, I might give it a shot,) but my understanding is that ESO bypasses the problem of just who won that civil war by setting it in the distant past, before even Tiber Septim rose up to unite Tamriel as part of his Empire.

Skyrim is one of my favorite games ever - it took nearly everything I didn't like about Oblivion out and it added in freaking Dragons, along with much better character models and much better voice acting (not to say perfect though - I don't know why brothers Vilkas and Farkas have totally different accents.)

So I'd love to see a new Elder Scrolls game in the main series, not only to see what new innovations they come up with, but also to see how the story progresses.

One thing that always struck me as unsatisfying in Skyrim was the Thalmor. I really, really want to fight the Thalmor, but you don't come across all too many of them that frequently. You deal with them in one of the earlier main story quests, and it's a Thalmor agent who you have to fight at the end of the College of Winterhold quests, but even if you side with Ulfric and kick the Empire out of Skyrim, there's never a really satisfying defeat you can hand to the Thalmor (though there is one fort in the northeast that's controlled by them, and I went full-on werewolf against those guys, which was tremendously satisfying.)

I know that most ES games focus primarily on a supernatural threat like a Daedric Prince or something around that level, but I the Thalmor are a great concept that I'd love to smash.

Most of the ES games have focused on one province or another. II was in High Rock, III was Morrowind, IV was in Cyrodiil, and V was Skyrim. As of Skyrim, the Thalmor have total control of the Summerset Isles, Valenwood, and Elsweyr, and I believe they control at least part of the southern half of Hammerfell. The nice thing about all of these settings is that I think they'd all be warm climates. Don't get me wrong - Skyrim was a beautiful environment, but I think it would be wise to go in the opposite direction next time. I'd love (love love) to play an Elder Scrolls game that takes us through a hot, arid climate.

I'm given to understand that Hammerfell and Elsweyr are both fairly desert-like, though given that Hammerfell is actually northwest of Cyrodiil, I'm not sure how that works (then again, magic.) Valenwood is, I think, more of a jungle environment.

Clearly I don't think we need to do a Civl War narrative in every game, but I think Hammerfell has a lot of potential for feeling very different as you pass through its different territories, with defiant hold-outs in the northeast and those suffering under Dominion rule farther south. On the other hand, both Valenwood and Elsweyr could have full-on revolutions, where you'd fight to free the entire country.

And on top of this, you always have the scheming of the various Daedric Princes and other supernatural forces at work. After all, while Alduin's return was the big threat that had to be dealt with immediately, in the long run, his impact on the world of Tamriel will be relatively small (well, except that there will be dragons flying around everywhere now.) So you could even put the mortals-vs-mortal story of fighting the Thalmor as a kind of background context that you can participate in, like the Stormcloak rebellion, while you deal with the supernatural crisis of, I don't know, Clavicus Vile bringing the Dwemer back to conquer the world.