Azura, is The Elder Scrolls 6 still far away?Sixth main entrance as Starfield arrives by the end of the year BethesdaThe iconic saga may not exist now. Sure, we’re not short of massive open worlds — especially now that SSDs are taking over and rewriting what level design can do — but you can’t fill that skyrim hole, can you?
What makes The Elder Scrolls so fascinating? Is this a quirky but epic fantasy setting? Is this the buggy nature of all games in that world? Or does it just come down to a unique combination of flexible RPG systems and immersive simulation DNA? Most veterans would argue it’s the latter. But we can’t chalk up the success of the series to the perfect fusion of genres, because the game itself is by no means rigid.
There’s no denying that Skyrim set a new standard for open-world gaming back in 2011. That’s why everyone is still talking about it now. Its popularity is largely due to its implementation of Radiant AI alongside the series’ main procedural missions and traditional handcrafted storyline. It has Bethesda Game Studios’ patented world design, and those unforgettable bite-sized legends.
Meanwhile, The Elder Scrolls Online, following the earth-shattering philosophy of Oblivion and Skyrim, has become bigger than anyone expected, and the game’s marketing keeps emphasizing what every TES fan knows: it’s Stories about us personally and how we experience each content in a completely different way.
But The Elder Scrolls’ biggest success has always been making the world of Tamriel feel like home, not a 50-hour vacation. Anyway, that’s how I felt when I first stepped into Tamriel with the Oblivion – it was (and still is) a special experience, and it wasn’t just nostalgia. bear with me.
I keep coming back to oblivion because it’s very charming in a very naive way. Cyrodiil’s (heavy) medieval European setting is vanilla enough to feel idyllic and homey without trying too hard. The magic system is horribly broken; the NPC’s “revolutionary” AI; the bots that are both lively and entertaining…the list goes on, but it all boils down to Bethesda making the right game at the right time, but not what it needs to achieve its ambitions of all the correct techniques.
If we look at Skyrim – or even 2008’s Fallout 3 – it quickly becomes apparent that Bethesda Game Stuidos learned a lot from going all-in with Oblivion early in the 360/PS3 generation. One day in 2004, you were playing GTA: San Andreas, and less than two years later, Todd Howard and his team launched a giant sandbox full of houses and caves you could visit, with (some) real life NPCs, and physics you’ve only seen in a few shooters before. It’s a banana, but it’s also far from polished. The combination was astounding.
For all the seriousness Oblivion takes at the start – including Sir Patrick Stewart in a limited (but crucial) role – the experience immediately derails once you step out of the Imperial sewers. Oversized crabs (disgusting creatures) are looking for a 24/7 brawl. Bandits sit on the road, do nothing but bully you, and end up wearing only premium gear for some reason. A guy who loves his dogs randomly crashes and starts hitting those same dogs until he is brought down by the town guard. You accidentally kill a peasant who is blocking a sword slash, and next thing you know, you’re part of a secret cult of assassins. it’s great!
This is just a small sampling of the stupid, weird things that will happen in 100 hours of gameplay. These quirky, Pratchett-esque moments wouldn’t be possible without some game systems being fundamentally broken. However, I also believe that Bethesda was deliberately designed for this alternative vibe. Morrowind is already weird (though not mainstream, but a huge success), so it makes sense to retain some of its quirkiness.
In the midst of all that super important quest to save the world (or something), the third Elder Scrolls dares to ask (and answer) things like “Can a wizard come up with a totally unsafe spell to jump ridiculous distances?” question. You’ll find a dude splashing down the road with a book next to it. You use the book and jump like the Hulk in Ang Lee’s 2003 movie. the point? I don’t know, maybe people in fantasy worlds do all kinds of weird things. Thankfully, Oblivion is fully invested in the kind of pointless but memorable content that makes its world a lot more colorful and unpredictable.
It’s hard to keep track of the game’s top stories and questline lists because there are so many to choose from (“Whodunit?” is the best, by the way). That’s not even into the Shivering Isles expansion, which condenses all the crap out of oblivion into one big ball of lore and high-stakes adventure.
Like its gameplay and systems, Skyrim’s narrative efforts generally try to be epic, powerful, and all-around dependable — which goes a long way toward explaining why it’s so popular among so many players Resonated and still works like a charm. It often makes itself a silly game, but for the most part, it’s more gritty and serious. Perfect for the Game of Thrones era.
Oblivion, on the other hand, completely allows us to play impossible abominations:
It might look ugly and awkward by today’s standards, but Oblivion was an astounding display of what 360 was capable of at the time – and a precursor to the highly detailed, sprawling world to come. Even with its cartoonish art style, the fourth Elder Scrolls is intriguing — minus those unfortunate NPC faces — bringing countless PCs to their knees over the years; graphics mods only make performance and stability more erratic.
Of course, Skyrim is the better game. There is no way around this. But oblivion is still uniquely magical and strange. It’s a wonderful bridge between two very different eras of The Elder Scrolls and open world games in general. ZeniMax seems fully aware of its importance, celebrating the entire series with The Elder Scrolls OL, so I wish Bethesda Game Studios would read a few more pages from this book to avoid inadvertently making a terrifying “skyrim 2” “Whenever The Elder Scrolls 6 comes out. Leave it all to the wizard. Tamriel deserves a light heart.
