The Elder Scrolls 6 is in a particularly tricky spot as gaming enters the next generation of hardware with the PS5 and Xbox Series X. Even gamers who weren’t fans of The Elder Scrolls 5 have to admit that Skyrim defined RPGs for a generation of gaming, leading many other games to begin attempting to integrate open worlds into their design to varying degrees of success.
The Elder Scrolls 6 will need to pull no punches in order to live up to Skyrim’s immense legacy, but with hot competition in the first-person fantasy open-world RPG market coming from Obsidian Entertainment and its upcoming title Avowed, the next Elder Scrolls game risked being overshadowed by new a IP, especially since there has been little news about TES6 since its announcement. However, there’s one big reason that Bethesda can now use Avowed to help ensure that the next Elder Scrolls is a game-changing RPG like Skyrim.
Bethesda was bought my Microsoft this week, as part of a deal to purchase the studio’s parent company Zenimax Media Inc. Obsidian Entertainment was bought by Microsoft all the way back in 2018, which could mean great things for fans of The Elder Scrolls. While old rivalries die hard, especially after the Obsidian-Bethesda Fallout: New Vegas controversy, this acquisition could mark the turning over of a new leaf in the collaborative history of the two studios.
For now at least Obsidian has been keeping many of the details about Avowed very close to its chest, with the Avowed trailer only really revealing the game’s setting in the world of Eora from Pillars of Eternity and the fact that it would be a sword-and-sorcery style first-person RPG that, at least in the trailer, reminded many fans of Skyrim. However, now that both companies are under one roof Bethesda could learn more about Avowed’s development process and some new design ideas that could be implemented in The Elder Scrolls 6.
For example, it is possible that Avowed will include ships just like in Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire, which saw the Watcher and their crew take to the high seas in search of the lost god of light Eothas. It is likely that The Elder Scrolls 6 is set in the west of Tamriel, around Hammerfell if rumors are to be believed.
The region is full of pirate factions like Hamerfell’s Restless League that operates out of the island of Stros M’Kai in The Elder Scrolls: Redguard, and Bethesda could look at how Avowed tries to handle managing a ship in an open-world RPG. In short, Avowed will be able to serve as a litmus test for what works and what doesn’t in next-gen RPGs. It is likely that Obsidian will introduce some ambitious features – the game will have to if it wants to avoid constant comparisons with The Elder Scrolls series. Ironically, this could now be great for The Elder Scrolls 6.
The Elder Scrolls 6 will need to introduce some ambitious new features as well if it’s going to step out of Skyrim’s sizeable shadow, so having a game like Avowed try out some potential new features first will be a huge boon for the studio, and with Microsoft now owning both companies Bethesda may be able to get some more intimate insight into Obsidian’s development process far in advance, perhaps in exchange for sharing ideas.
Not only that, but Bethesda also has its own projects which it can use to experiment with based on some of the lessons learned from Avowed. It has already been established, for example, that Bethesda will be embarking on its first new IP RPG project in decades with its upcoming game Starfield, and the studio has also said that Starfield will be released before The Elder Scrolls 6.
Furthermore, it has also come out that The Elder Scrolls 6 and Starfield will mark a big turn away from the use of Bethesda’s old engine. The new engine could mark as big a leap as the studio made from Morrowind to Oblivion. This would allow Bethesda to learn from the development of Avowed, experiment with some of the lessons learned in the studio’s new engine in Starfield, and then realize a more polished version of the next-gen first-person fantasy RPG in The Elder Scrolls 6.
The Elder Scrolls 6 has never had more educational resources available for its development, and the fact that these opportunities are now present could make the long wait for the Skyrim sequel, rumored to be set for release around 2025, finally worth it for many fans. The sharing of resources and learning experiences between Bethesda and Obsidian could see the open-world first-person RPG genre get out of the plateau it has been in since Skyrim’s release, with Fallout 4 and Fallout 76 both failing to achieve the same acclaim as Skyrim or expand significantly on the best aspects of the genre, like player freedom.
Ultimately, however, it remains to be seen how Microsoft will manage Bethesda and Obsidian now that they’re under one broad roof. It is possible that the new owner will see competition as healthy and more likely to produce good results from both companies, which could mean that Bethesda may not have the total access to Obsidian’s development process that the company might need to perfect the design of The Elder Scrolls 6 in another way.
It is also possible that Starfield’s sci-fi setting will not be the best place to test out some of the things learned about Avowed, a fantasy game, which could mean that The Elder Scrolls 6 still has to take some big risks. Many fans, however, will likely see that as a good thing. Whatever happens, The Elder Scrolls 6 still has a huge legacy to live up to, and it remains to be seen what changes Microsoft will make to the developer and its process and how it could affect the development timelines of its upcoming projects and the priorities the studio has.
The Elder Scrolls 6 is in development.
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