The Elder Scrolls 6 will need to set a new benchmark for open-world first-person RPGs if it’s going to live up to Skyrim’s immense success, let alone surpass it. The next game in the series will need to provide an experience that gives players the franchise’s famous levels of freedom while also providing a range of intuitive ways the player can interact with the world and the characters in it.
Bethesda should look to a feature included in Fallout: New Vegas by Obsidian Entertainment which would make the world of The Elder Scrolls 6 more intuitive, exciting, and would provide players will alternate ways to interact with hostile NPCs beyond initiating combat. If Bethesda implements this feature and more like it, The Elder Scrolls 6 could be the next-generational RPG experience fans and the studio alike hope it could be.
Fallout: New Vegas had a unique factional disguise system which allowed players to use their own logic when interacting with the world. There is little reason, for example, that a knight with the Brotherhood of Steel would attack someone in Brotherhood of Steel power armor, as long as they were far enough away to not be personally identified. Similarly, there is little reason to think that the sadists of Caesar’s Legion would notice a new face among their many ranks, making moments like trying to get an audience with Caesar later in the game feel more tense and interesting.
The Elder Scrolls 6’s disguise system would need to be a little more robust than New Vegas in a few ways. The world of The Elder Scrolls, for example, has many different races from Argonians to Redguards to Dunmer, and a Nord with a big bushy beard shouldn’t just be able to put on Thalmor robes and stroll into the elven embassy without being noticed in the same way as an Altmer player. However, luckily for Bethesda, the Skyrim modding community once again steps up to save the day.
Master of Disguise is a fantastically flexible mod that allows players to use real logic to figure out exactly how they are going to disguise themselves and their party members. For example, if the Dragonborn is a Nord and they are travelling with Faendal the Bosmer follower from Riverwood, they are likely to be spotted easily by the Thalmor if both are wearing Thalmor robes, as the fact that one wearer wasn’t an elf would stand out.
However, if the Nord player puts on armor from a dead Imperial soldier, who would be allied with the Thalmor in the lore, then the Aldmeri Dominion will not only be non-hostile but will be far more likely to believe the disguise. If the Nord wears Imperial armor and the Bosmer wears elven armor or Thalmor robes, the disguise is far more likely to work, and Masters of Disguise is constantly updating the relationships between factions in the game, as well as taking into account the likelihood that the player’s disguise would be believed.
This allows players to do Skyrim side quests like Missing in Action with a completely different approach to the vanilla game. Instead of simply having the fight all of the Aldmeri forces to reach and rescue Thorald Gray-Mane, the player can create an elaborate disguise and make it all the way to the room the prisoner of war is being held in, only killing his torturer to avoid witnesses. Furthermore, suspicious behavior like running around, stealing, or getting too close to NPCs will cause them to see through the disguise.
Adding in disguises is one of many ways Bethesda can make the world of The Elder Scrolls 6 feel more dynamic and more reactive to player choices. It is by improving upon this kind of environmental storytelling in The Elder Scrolls 6, not creating more railroaded narratives, that Bethesda could help the writing of the next Elder Scrolls game live up to its predecessor’s legacy, while giving players new options that could increase the game’s longevity by allowing them to interact with the world in totally new ways with every playthrough.
The Elder Scrolls 6 is currently in development.
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