Poll: The next Elder Scrolls game and the obstacles it faces

[Raddra]

I really don't want anything remotely like settlement building in TES.

F4 was clearly pruned of settled content to shoestring in settlement building. Theres something like 3 actual communities in the game. The rest was left empty so you could build stuff on it. But 'settler' #231 has no personality, no drive no quests, no dialogue and stands around unless you tell him to pat dirt by a plant. That's not content to me.

Building stuff is cool yes, but the gameplay cost isn't worth it.

 

[Zen Bard]

I'd actually LOVE to see the next Elder Scroll game set in Hammerfell. It'd be really interesting to play an open world RPG set in a desert.

True, in theory that's basically a Swords & Sorcery version of Fallout: New Vegas. But with the right art direction and aesthetic, it could potentially have an Arabian Nights type feel that one doesn't typically see in a fantasy game.

However since they explore a significant portion of the region in ESO, that's probably not going to happen.

As far as the plot, I agree with Saelune. It'd be interesting to just skip all the "Chosen One" stuff and give the player a more personal story. Maybe he/she is visiting Hammerfell on a trade mission when his/her caravan gets attacked. The player then goes on a quest for revenge that leads to intrigue involving the Thalmor, the Redgaurds and a shadowy otherworldly conspiracy group. The player's actions help determine the outcome.

 

[Argonian alchemist]

I really don't want anything remotely like settlement building in TES.

F4 was clearly pruned of settled content to shoestring in settlement building. Theres something like 3 actual communities in the game. The rest was left empty so you could build stuff on it. But 'settler' #231 has no personality, no drive no quests, no dialogue and stands around unless you tell him to pat dirt by a plant. That's not content to me.

Building stuff is cool yes, but the gameplay cost isn't worth it.

What if they kept the cool building stuff and the rest of the game didn't feel stripped down? In F4 it was a totally new mechanic but now the system is already built into the upgraded engine. So they could add in the settlement building without the game losing much at all, if anything.

Then what would you think of it? Would you still rather it without or?

 

[pookie101]

And just to put it out there, I just defeated Dagoth Ur, so...you're welcome. (First time I beat Morrowind on PC, though I have beaten it on Xbox multiple times before)

you may of beat him but we all know who the true savior of morrowind is.. saint juib the exterminator of the cliff racers all hail his name.

while you were off with busy work he saved the land !

as for the OP yeah give me some cannibalistic tree hugging elves

 

[Argonian alchemist]

And just to put it out there, I just defeated Dagoth Ur, so...you're welcome. (First time I beat Morrowind on PC, though I have beaten it on Xbox multiple times before)

you may of beat him but we all know who the true savior of morrowind is.. saint juib the exterminator of the cliff racers all hail his name.

while you were off with busy work he saved the land !

as for the OP yeah give me some cannibalistic tree hugging elves

Some heroic death he had.. Found him in the Soul Cairn in Skyrim. Needed my help finding lost pages to a diary. How far he has fallen. That was also probably the most annoying quest in the game.

 

[Javarock]

I firmly believe that it will be set in two countrys, Valenwood and Elsweyer. The contrast between desert and forest, elves and cat people/redguard would be a truly unique game onto itself, with a interesting feel and a landsize that is slightly bigger then skyrim.
To me it would be the perfect setting for the next game, since it sets the stage to explore a lot of the thalmor conflict setup in skyrim.

 

[pookie101]

And just to put it out there, I just defeated Dagoth Ur, so...you're welcome. (First time I beat Morrowind on PC, though I have beaten it on Xbox multiple times before)

you may of beat him but we all know who the true savior of morrowind is.. saint juib the exterminator of the cliff racers all hail his name.

while you were off with busy work he saved the land !

as for the OP yeah give me some cannibalistic tree hugging elves

Some heroic death he had.. Found him in the Soul Cairn in Skyrim. Needed my help finding lost pages to a diary. How far he has fallen. That was also probably the most annoying quest in the game.

i know what you mean ive got around 1000 hours in skyrim and i dont think ive ever completed that quest

 

[Argonian alchemist]

Some heroic death he had.. Found him in the Soul Cairn in Skyrim. Needed my help finding lost pages to a diary. How far he has fallen. That was also probably the most annoying quest in the game.

i know what you mean ive got around 1000 hours in skyrim and i dont think ive ever completed that quest

There's 3 things I hate about quests in RPGs.
- Fetch quests, "find 20 of X and bring them to Y"
- Areas where everything looks identical and its difficult/monotonous to traverse
- No visual and/or written context or map markers. "Find the pages.", "Okay, where are they?", "I don't know. *quest begins*"

And that quest was all 3 of these things.

 

[Darth Rosenberg]

I'm sure many will agree with me when I say that the real charm behind Morrowind was in its alien atmosphere. With a few exceptions, its actual gameplay mechanics were not really my thing, but the sequels were nonetheless lacking in a few important areas.

Re game mechanics/systems: they weren't and are not great, but they need to be seen in historic context as well, i.e. how many other massive open-world RPG's with first-person perspectives - and such detail and imagination in world building - existed at that point. To new players Morrowind may sadly be too aged given what they'd be comparing it to, but first time around Morrowind was a revelation, and people accepted its foibles given its brilliance in other areas.

I absolutely agree about the alien atmosphere, though:

When it comes right down to it, Cyrodil and Skyrim just weren't weird enough. Mehrunes Dagon's plane of Oblivion got old very quickly, and even Apocrypha (if it can even be counted) was too repetitive.

Cyrodil was hideously, almost offensively vanilla if you'd read bits and pieces of the pre-Oblivion references to that place and the Imperial City.

Oblivion was just an awful chocolate box primary hued pastiche of tropey European styles, and I at least hope TES doesn't revert to that kind of unambitious guff anytime soon.

Skyrim I didn't mind so much, as I admired the--- well, grittier aesthetic, and I'd wanted Skyrim to be the setting of the next TES back when Oblivion came out. Skryim's lore, as with Oblivion, was fairly pitifully watered down, but Bethesda post-Morrowind just love to toss away the potential of their lore, so I more or less expect the same again from TESVI.

My visit to the Shivering Isles was the last time that itch got scratched.

A lot of people say that, but I just found Sheogorath cringe-inducingly bland/contrived, so that whole story spoilt the expansion for me.

I voted Hammerfell, as ideally a new TES would usher in a new era of technical proficiency from Bethesda (.......I did say ideally), and I'd love to see sandstorms and shifting sands being used as a relevant environmental feature.

Even though I never pick beast races or bosmer/altmer/dunmer, I certainly wouldn't object to some of the other more outright freaky lands/cultures/races being featured, so long as Bethesda actually go all in and give us something that gets close to Morrowind's idiosyncratic mystique and beauty.

 

[Javarock]

Game-wise, I just want more depth and quality like Morrowind. It seriously is hands down the best in the series.

This. I really just want Morrowind remastered (not remade, mind you.) I couldn?t care less about another ?new? sequel seeing as both installments of TES since Morrowind have only moved further and further from the gameplay mechanics that make Morrowind the best in the series. I don?t have a gaming PC, so mods aren?t an option. Besides, I would want Bethesda to do the remaster, not some fans with too much time and talent on their hands. Personally, I was pissed when the Skyrim remaster was announced; why the fuck did they remaster a 5-year-old, mediocre game that still looks fine when they?re sitting on a far superior game that genuinely could use a fresh coat of paint??

Ultimately, I would like to see a TES single-player experience (ala Morrowind primarily,) but supported like an MMORPG: a vanilla game, then fully fleshed out expansions like Tribunal, Bloodmoon, Shivering Isles, etc., that continually add quests, items and characters unique to their respective areas, but also cross over into one another. There you have it: remaster Morrowind, then a deep expansion for each of the primary races? homelands, and I?m pretty sure I?d never need another game ever in my life.

Morrowind had incredibly mediocre and terrible gameplay mechanics. If you've played the game recently you can really see how terribly it has aged in that respect, burdened by a clunky combat system, a UI that simply would not work with consoles. Finding things is very rustic, and while not all together bad, could have been set up better.

From a gameplay standpoint, it was abyssal to today's standards.

From a narrative perspective, and in the context of its time, it was exceptional.

Bethesda needs better writers and some revisions in regards to the "radient" quest systems they have been experimenting with since Skyrim. If you look at some of the major complaints toward skyrim and fallout 4, is that these radient quests are incredibly generic and unrewarding, and makes the game feel like less then it could be, if there wasn't such an emphasis on the empty-shelled content.

 

[Saelune]

Game-wise, I just want more depth and quality like Morrowind. It seriously is hands down the best in the series.

This. I really just want Morrowind remastered (not remade, mind you.) I couldn?t care less about another ?new? sequel seeing as both installments of TES since Morrowind have only moved further and further from the gameplay mechanics that make Morrowind the best in the series. I don?t have a gaming PC, so mods aren?t an option. Besides, I would want Bethesda to do the remaster, not some fans with too much time and talent on their hands. Personally, I was pissed when the Skyrim remaster was announced; why the fuck did they remaster a 5-year-old, mediocre game that still looks fine when they?re sitting on a far superior game that genuinely could use a fresh coat of paint??

Ultimately, I would like to see a TES single-player experience (ala Morrowind primarily,) but supported like an MMORPG: a vanilla game, then fully fleshed out expansions like Tribunal, Bloodmoon, Shivering Isles, etc., that continually add quests, items and characters unique to their respective areas, but also cross over into one another. There you have it: remaster Morrowind, then a deep expansion for each of the primary races? homelands, and I?m pretty sure I?d never need another game ever in my life.

Morrowind had incredibly mediocre and terrible gameplay mechanics. If you've played the game recently you can really see how terribly it has aged in that respect, burdened by a clunky combat system, a UI that simply would not work with consoles. Finding things is very rustic, and while not all together bad, could have been set up better.

From a gameplay standpoint, it was abyssal to today's standards.

From a narrative perspective, and in the context of its time, it was exceptional.

Bethesda needs better writers and some revisions in regards to the "radient" quest systems they have been experimenting with since Skyrim. If you look at some of the major complaints toward skyrim and fallout 4, is that these radient quests are incredibly generic and unrewarding, and makes the game feel like less then it could be, if there wasn't such an emphasis on the empty-shelled content.

Having spent a couple hundred hours of the last couple of weeks playing Morrowind again, it was still super fun. And I think alot of people think people like me want TES to be -exactly- like Morrowind. I dont. I want it to improve on what Morrowind already had. Oblivion did not do that. Skyrim did for Oblivion, and certainly touched on a few things from Morrowind, but there is far less ambition and more attempts at greater mass appeal.

Skyrim is too easy for the wrong reasons. Alot of things are too streamlined and too video gamey.

Like, there are places in Morrowind that were likely made just because places like that would exist in a "real" (fantasy) world like that. But in Skyrim every place is designed to be looted and completed, and honestly, that makes them boring. I dont doubt more of Morrowind's irrelevant locations stand out to me than many of Skyrim's.

I even like alot of little hidden unmarked stories you can infer.

I dont mind having radiant quests as fluff to keep stuff happening, but most quests should really be more hand-crafted. Like finding that guy's sword in Whiterun could be more interesting if someone specific stole the sword, and maybe you can deal with getting it back in more ways than killing them.