The Elder Scrolls 6 will eventually be part of a long legacy of games developed by Bethesda Softworks. It is well known for its penchant for developing open-world RPGs and have attempted to make its games as immersive as possible. In its pursuit of realism, Bethesda Softworks created a system seen in Skyrim that should make its appearance in The Elder Scrolls 6 on launch.
This system is the survival mode that came packaged with The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim Special Edition as well as the one seen one year after launch for Fallout 4. Depending on how one sees the involvement of Bethesda during the development of Fallout: New Vegas, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that Fallout: New Vegas was the first Bethesda game to have survival mode, or hardcore mode. The survival mode was meant to challenge players with the gritty realism of eating, sleeping, and traversing an expansive open-world without fast travel, and it’s a fan-favorite inclusion in some games.
As previously mentioned, survival mode was not an initial part of Skyrim. It took Bethesda 6 years to eventually come out with Skyrim Special Edition which came with the survival mode as well as the DLC. When activated in a game, survival mode does not replace the difficulty, but instead reinforces the current difficulty which can still be changed. The most challenging way to play Skyrim would be to play on legendary difficulty with survival mode on, but what changes make survival mode so difficult?
There are 3 major changes that survival mode brings with it as well as a litany of other smaller ones. The first is simple: eat food or starve. The very first change turns one of the most useless elements of Skyrim into its most important one. Food now has value to the player because it is imperative to feed their character or else their maximum stamina will be reduced over time until there’s nothing left. Hunger also affects the players ability to wield heavier weapons as a hungry person would not have the strength to wield a war hammer, and cooking stations also become more relevant as cooked food restores hunger better than uncooked food.
The next major change is how lack of sleep affects the character. Fatigue affects the player’s maximum magicka levels as well as potion efficiency, stamina regeneration, and magicka regeneration. To reduce fatigue, the player must scour Skyrim for a bed to sleep in while also keeping in mind that indoor beds work better than outdoor beds. Indoor beds are much more effective at reducing fatigue and are the only beds that can give the player the well rested bonus. Being well rested means that the player will gain experience 10% faster across all skills, while Survival mode also forces players to sleep in order to level up their characters.
Skyrim is a mountainous and overall snowy land whose biting cold now can be experienced in survival mode. On top of sleeping and eating, the player must endure the cold of the wilderness and make sure they don’t die of hypothermia. This function of survival mode introduces biomes within Skyrim that are warmer or colder, and the player must seek refuge by fires or drink hot soup to keep their temperature at acceptable levels. Suffering from cold status effects can render skills like pickpocketing and lockpicking useless and will even kill the player if their cold meter drops to zero. Warmer clothing can also be worn to counteract the effects at the sacrifice of defensive armor.
Other than the big 3, there are a few smaller changes to make the Skyrim experience more realistic. The first of which is the inability to fast travel outside of hailing carriages and riding dragons around Skyrim. Health no longer regenerates over time and must be mended through spells, food, or rest, while Arrows and lockpicks now have weight values and players can’t carry as many due to the reduction in carry weight. A few new diseases and afflictions have been added to make for a more treacherous wilderness, and finally, shrines and standing stones are less effective and shrines require gold donations to cure diseases. All of these changes put together make up the survival mode that Skyrim was blessed with in 2017.
The Elder Scrolls 6 will inevitably take some cues from previous Bethesda titles and survival mode should be one of them. To build on that statement, survival mode should also come with the game on launch, and there shouldn’t be a 6 year wait before players get it. Even the one year wait for it’s addition to Fallout 4 was too long because Fallout: New Vegas managed to release with survival mode built into it.
When considering why The Elder Scrolls 6 should have survival mode, the first thing that comes to mind is the added challenge. Having something extra to make the experience more immersive never hurts a game even if it makes it more challenging. The best thing for Bethesda to do in this instance is to do what it did with Skyrim and make it an addition to whatever the difficulty is set to instead of making it automatically the hardest difficulty setting like in Fallout 4. This makes the extra content more approachable and enticing for casual players to try out.
Survival mode doesn’t just have to be about managing meters, it can also be a chance for Bethesda to sneak extra interactions with NPCs who also have to survive in the world. The game world doesn’t have to be static either. There could be major changes to the progression of the story if the player turns on survival mode before starting the game, and having survival mode ship with the game gives Bethesda a lot of creative licence during the development process to make survival mode as well integrated as it can be. Bethesda should at least start with the idea that survival mode is going to be a part of The Elder Scrolls 6 to give themselves time to fully realize the potential of what survival mode can do for their game.
Hopefully, Bethesda is already considering survival mode for The Elder Scrolls 6 because there are plenty of fans who would enjoy this game mode. It’s already become a staple of Bethesda’s more recent titles, so it stands to reason that it should already be including survival mode. Having a challenge like survival mode gives more replayability value to the buyer and gives Bethesda a chance to score with a wider audience making it a no-brainer to include.
The Elder Scrolls 6 is in development.
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