The Elder Scrolls 6 is currently in development, but Bethesda has yet to reveal much about it. The setting, the story, and even the time period its set in is completely up to speculation. It will be years before Bethesda reveals anything about The Elder Scrolls 6, but that hasn’t stopped fans from creating theories.
The announcement trailer that was shown 2 years ago is all anyone has to go off of for speculation. There isn’t much detailed in the trailer other than the working title of the game, The Elder Scrolls 6. Other than that, the setting appears to be somewhere mountainous with sparse vegetation, much like the land of Solstheim in the Dragonborn DLC from Skyrim. This may not show much, but there’s at least one twist that the franchise could pull off: going back instead of moving forward.
It’s no secret that, after Skyrim, the Dwemer have been the most featured loose ends in The Elder Scrolls. The mystery of the Dwemer is rooted in their disappearance and there has been no resolution through any of The Elder Scrolls games. All that remains of them is their highly-efficient technology that no one understands or has been able to replicate since. The knowledge to build robots, steam engines, and even zeppelins have been lost by the Dwemer’s disappearance, dating far back.
Yagrum Bagarn is the only living Dwemer in The Elder Scrolls series that the player ever meets. He dedicated his life to uncovering the mystery of his people’s disappearance and was unfortunately sidetracked by his illness. There is a questline in The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind that allows the player to help him with his illness, but there is never any closure to his work on the mystery.
The current trend between all of The Elder Scrolls games is that so far each game has taken place in chronological order, barring The Elder Scrolls: Online. As a big shock to fans, it’s not impossible that The Elder Scrolls 6 could take place a long time before The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim. In fact, it could go as far back as the 1st Era. If this was the case then the story of The Elder Scrolls 6 would precede that of The Elder Scrolls: Online which takes place in the interim between the 2nd and 3rd era. This would be breaking new ground because The Elder Scrolls: Online is in the earliest point of the timeline that has been shown in The Elder Scrolls franchise.
There is already a precedent for an Elder Scrolls game to jump around the timeline as proven by The Elder Scrolls: Online. The question is, why would the story go back to the 1st Era? The answer circles back to the mystery of the Dwemer. The Battle of Red Mountain where the Dwemer activated the Heart of Lorkhan and caused their disappearance occurred in the 1st Era. Nobody knows why activating the Heart of Lorkhan would cause an entire race to vanish from existence and its anyone’s guess as to where they went, but exploring this ripe bit of lore would make a ton of fans happy.
There are a couple of ways to incorporate this scenario into The Elder Scrolls 6. The first of which is to have the game set directly in the 1st Era, which would not only allow the player to experience or even influence the Battle of Red Mountain, but it would also allow the story to revolve around the aftermath. There could be skirmishes between the races of The Elder Scrolls games to lay claim to the newly abandoned Dwemer strongholds and to the treasures that lay within, and it should make for a good open ended story with a lot for the player to do.
The other way would be to have The Elder Scrolls 6 continue the tradition of having the numbered games in chronological order. This could lead to the big twist in the story being that the player must utilize some sort of magic artifact, like an Elder Scroll, to time travel. This has been done before in The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim to see Alduin brought low by the dragonrend shout, while this would most likely be the avenue for Bethesda to follow as it is in keeping with Skyrim lore and its history of game development.
Based on the way time travel is integrated in The Elder Scrolls 6, there are a couple of outcomes. If the time travel function acts more like a glimpse into the past, then Bethesda should structure the game around using it frequently. The explanation for this time travel sight should come from either a magical accident or through the use of an Elder Scroll. Locations where significant events have happened can be utilized to give context clues that further the player’s investigation, and clues would be gathered through thorough inspection of areas using the time travel mechanic which would ultimately lead to a point where the player gives the final verdict. This would make for an interesting Elder Scrolls experience as it would begin to feel more like a detective game, at least for the main story.
The other option would be to have the player step through portals in time to reach the 1st Era. Actions taken in the past would then affect the present, and there could be some notable changes meaning there would be advantages and disadvantages to time travel. That being said there should also be a feature that incentivizes the player to time travel more frugally, so they don’t alter the timeline too much. Similar detective work could be done, but it wouldn’t be as on-demand as the previous option. This variation on the time travel scenario should probably have fixed locations where time travel is available to make it more easily scalable for the developers. The risk assessment in time traveling coupled with the tangible impact should make for a very interesting Elder Scrolls experience.
Having two simultaneous points in time working themselves out in tandem should be an interesting concept to tackle in a video game. It has been done in games like Life is Strange; however, it hasn’t yet been tried on the scale of an open world video game like The Elder Scrolls 6. Undoubtedly, it would take a lot of work and effort to produce a system that can allow for two instances of the world to exist in the game’s memory, so developers would have to create certain shortcuts to compensate, but horror game The Medium shows something similar can be done. Thankfully, Bethesda will be working with the next gen consoles whose hardware will give developers more room to work with.
The Elder Scrolls 6 is currently in development.
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