Five Things I'd Personally Like to See In: The Elder Scrolls VI

With the recent announcement from Bethesda that the next installment of the Elder Scrolls series is in production as well as me diving back into Skyrim recently I figured I may as well do a blog post like this. Now bear in mind this is just what I would personally like to see, nothing has been confirmed aside from it being in production, we don't even know where it's set. 

Now a little bit of a background, I have loved the Elder Scrolls games since Morrowind so to say I am perhaps a little hyped would be understating it! I don't even want to count the hours I've sunk into Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim combined. 

This top 5 list won't be in any particular order so take it more along the lines of five things I'd like to see in the next Elder Scrolls, so without further ado, here we go with number five!

5. Spell Crafting

Now spell crafting was conspicuous by it's absence in Skyrim and if I am honest the vanilla spells were not all that exciting. Thankfully mods managed to fix a lot of that (such as Apocalypse magic and the like) but giving us an interesting spell crafting system would be oh so appreciated.

I am not entirely sure how they could do it in an interesting way but perhaps a base spell type (projectile, aura, stream etc.) Then secondary and/or even tertiary effects as your spell crafting ability increases. For example an aura spell that raises the dead and gives them all bound bows or a chain lightning spell which casts an area of effect frenzy on each target hit, that kind of idea could I think be very cool and interesting to include.

I just hope if they do decide to reintroduce spell crafting they take some inspiration from the extensive magic mods for Skyrim when it comes to spells and effects. Which leads us into number 4 quite nicely.

4. Improved Magic

For the most part magic was alright in Skyrim but things like destruction magic scaled especially poorly and the selection of spells wasn't exactly inspiring overall. I don't think I'm the only one who'd like to see a veritable library of fun new spells and spell effects in the next installment of the Elder Scrolls.

One spell school in particular I'd like to see some changes to due to it being a personal favourite: conjuration. I am mainly hoping I can quite literally command a veritable army of undead thralls or elemental Atronachs as having only two of each in Skyrim was a little disappointing to my favourite build (a sneaky, stealthy user of conjuration and illusion magic if you were curious!)

Though some overall increased variety of spells across the board would be greatly appreciated I feel.

This would be in addition to spell crafting hopefully but I'd genuinely settle for just a lot more fun spells. The scaling issue with some of the magic should also be addressed which leads me to the next thing I'd like to see, an expanded perks system!

3. Expanded and Improved Perks and Skills

Now there was nothing wrong in the slightest with Skyrim's perks system I just hope they expand upon it and give every skill some really fun perks to use. If only to add to the roleplaying aspect of things, enabling new synergies between various perk trees, if they even take that approach this time.

A lot of my desire for this comes from recently using the Ordinator perks pack for Skyrim which massively expands the perk tree for every skill and allows for some frankly insane synergies. I don't expect Bethesda to go quite that crazy but I'd definitely like to see the perks and skills system expanded somewhat.

Some kind of scaling related to skill increasing effectiveness and damage would be nice I think too. A character with a maximum of 100 in for example two handed weapons should be vastly more effective than a character with 5 in two handed weapons regardless of perks. Then again maybe the leveling and skill system will be entirely different? We can but speculate!

2. Settlement Building

I actually didn't mind the settlement building aspect of Fallout 4 though it was far from perfect. However I think a settlement building aspect in the next Elder Scrolls would be all kinds of awesome if it's implemented correctly. Plus you could already build your own houses in Skyrim with the Hearthfire DLC so it's the next logical step anyway.

However I would much prefer it if it had you focusing on just one big settlement rather than dozens of smaller ones. Say for some story, plot or guild related reason you become lord or lady and have to choose one of several locations with various pros and cons for the new settlement. 

They could even add more of a management aspect to it as well and I wouldn't complain in the slightest! Managing caravans and patrols, hiring enchanters and blacksmiths and fending off bandit raids which brings me quite neatly to number one.

1. Living/Dynamic World

Now Skyrim did a pretty good job of creating a believably living world but I'd like to see a genuinely living and breathing sandbox that carries on with or without player interaction. Maybe a bit much to hope for and mind boggling in it's complexity to implement but would I like to see it, yes, yes I would.

Bandit camps that grow in size if ignored, raiding nearby towns, carvans and merchants moving between towns that can affect and change the availability of goods and resources. Smaller settlements being wiped out only for errant necromancers to raise the fallen and go on a rampage. Watching rival armies from different factions clashing in epic battles whether you are part of them or not. Things like that, this one is likely more of a pipe dream I know but I live in hope that one day, those kinds of things are the norm in RPG's. 

I was originally going to do a top ten but I only got to seven so I'll do another top five when I actually think of a couple more things I'd like to see in The Elder Scrolls VI. Maybe a tad early for hype but can you really blame me for looking forward to it? I hope not!