Elder Scrolls 6 Discussion | The Elder Scrolls Podcast #26

[Music] what is up ladies and gentlemen welcome back to fudge muppet i'm scott here with michael drew as always for the first elder scrolls podcast of 2021 and today we're just actually going to take it easy nice and like you know in the theme of the holidays and just chill and talk about elder scrolls 6 rather broadly we can start talking about some of the potential plot ideas and a lot of you guys ask our opinions about elder scrolls 6 all the time and what like what we'd like to see in game play and and you know classes coming back attributes coming back so we can start wherever we'd like where would you guys like to start i guess an easy one could just kind of be talking about the location and the setting of things kind of like the time period it's set in aka how far after skyrim like i don't think we're gonna get like a prequel or anything like that not that i wouldn't like that it's just like how often do we get an elder scrolls game right it's like come on like i want to know what happens next kind of thing yeah i mean you say it's a pretty chill topic but i remember when the trailer first came out it's like analyzing the position of the sun to see where it's realistically going to be the setting you know funnily enough that's actually assuming they made the trailer with care then that's probably a good giveaway the problem with that is that they sort of said oh there's some like easter eggs in there like you know you'll be able to tell like you know hardcore elder scrolls fans will be able to tell and it's like maybe but i feel like everything was just sort of wrong i feel like they just slapped a cgi trailer together and just go like oh he's some mountains and when you when you say a comment like that you just get heaps of engagement because everyone's like oh we can figure it out you know when you say there's clues somewhere there isn't so you just give something a lot of attention yeah yeah it's interesting um and we should do a video on it at one point but there are all these bits of information from previous elder scrolls games that allude to the next ones like there was i think it's like a prophecy of some guy called alfred white lip or something like that in morrowind that basically talks about like the daedra invasions coming in and you know that's the the deal with oblivion and oblivion places there were like a bunch of references to dragons and so on it's hard to pick because you could like go to skyrim and say like oh look at there's stuff about valenwood and coos and vale and stuff like that and and go well on the next game surveillance but they did put a fair bit into hammerfell i think because they developed its law quite a bit like you know it's um part in the great war and it's you know the stras makai treaty and then also you see little bits like you know with sadia and so on i think it's tanith or whatever could have held out longer if it weren't for betrayal it's kind of like building it a bit yeah there's a lot of hammerfell related stuff and not nearly as much when it comes to high rock like hammerfell would be a really cool game i'm happy for it to be in hammerfell or high rock preferably both as much as i'm a fan of like pick one thing and do it well if i'm being idealistic i would obviously focus yeah a focus on the iliac bay like you you get elements of everything there because if it's just high rock you'll you'll get you'll inevitably get to points where environments start to look very samey you know you know like going up towards north point and all of those areas where it's just you know it's the whole map is very craggy and and all of that stuff whereas if you have a bit of everything you get some you know like um some like almost you know naval stuff around the bay you've got your deserts of hammerfell and their um culture and things like that and then you get elements of high rock and it'd be interesting to see there you know how they mesh together because if they've had an interesting history yeah i think just higher rock would be the worst case scenario especially because like you don't even have um like the orcs and orcinium is now in hammerfell like in the border dragontail mountain sort of area so like if it was just high rock you wouldn't even it's not even like you'd have orsinium and the orcs and so on there to add i mean you get some richmond stuff which could be cool but yeah like like you're saying it would be best if it was i think honestly like i wouldn't even be a part like this isn't going to be whatever scroll 60 isn't but i i do like the idea of the sort of um witcher 3 approach in terms of using scale but for cross sections of nations so like you know you had the nilfgaard invasions and temeria and stuff and then you had like you know redania and the free city novograd and they're all like the cross section but in depth you know what i mean because then you can sort of really explore those cities and stuff in their fullness and you get that you know cross-section of cultures so you get more exposure so it's yeah there may also be the element that bethesda feel like especially after all this time that they need to one-up skyrim and if you think about it skyrim had a really grand story you know like um with all the dragons and you literally become a prophesied basically god and and the thing is after that can they go back to a basic like oh you know you're just a a guy who gets involved in high rock politics and you can kind of you know it's a small i feel like they'll never go back to small scale after skyrim i think i i don't know in the main story like like you can have a big scale story without like the subject like restricting the player i guess to being dragonball and like for example like if they did go with the whole towers thing and the zadamanton tower a big thumb or mega plot like you can have heaps of metaphysical like cool stuff happening there without having to be like i'm the sword singer born or whatever yeah i mean if you take a look at oblivion that's a good example of that like you're the champion of cyrodiil yeah the emperor saw you in his dreams but you're not the dragonborn you don't have an innate power or something you can just unleash that will that's like inborn right yeah like so you could do the exact same thing but still have a story that feels as grand as the oblivion crisis or as intense but the other thing is sorry i was just going to say the other thing is obviously it's a much newer game let's say it's released in 2024 right imagine the scale of wars and things like that you could have so things would feel a lot more grand just visually because oh there's a hundred soldiers fighting a hundred soldiers on this massive battlefield instead of i'm at the battle of bruma and my two guards from skin grad show have shown up my two guards from anvil and so on yeah well that's the thing with hammerfell is it really does kind of seem like the stage is set for something big to happen you know like even though the second treaty of stros makai is signed so that the old married dominion and hammerfell are kind of you know they're not attacking each other but it's pretty implied that it's going to happen again and you've got this kind of vacuum of the sword singers were a massive part of hammerfell's culture but it's recently died out and new generations are starting to look at it as if it was just a myth you know it's kind of just their folklore almost as opposed to a a serious thing that happens you know being able to summon your soul sword but it just sounds exactly like the kind of thing they would put upon the player in elder scrolls for sure yeah but then i was thinking about it it's like that could really to an extent pigeonhole you into using you know kind of like fighting with a sword you know obviously be able to do your own things but it would to an extent force it it definitely would especially if you did a system like skyrim where instead of word walls you found memory stones and each memory stone has a new sword singer ability you can use and i know you could play it like say they work like dragon shouts but they're all sword themed you could have a mage that uses magic and then gets up close to enemies and goes oh i'm gonna use my sword singer power and just get some like 15 seconds of you know high sword ethereal damage right something like that but i feel like if you want to make it as expansive as dragon shouts it does start getting silly like you can have like oh this is fire sword this is like you know what like fear sword like basically all the different elements or like yeah i think at the end of the day they just got to realize it's antithetical to like their sort of game mission statement which is be who you want and explore the world exactly and if you can't be you want because your pigeon holds the more pigeon-holed things there are to put you in a cause like obviously sometimes you need a little bit of direction like to push you a long main story song but definitely going for something more along the lines of oblivion in terms of character i thinks what if they did a cyberpunk but actually properly and they were like pick your life path they just sword singer i mean minutes of gameplay yeah i mean i don't care if they went something heaps random like kind of like the alternate start mods for skyrim where there's all these different areas you can start from and you just pick it and then you start but bethesda is not going to do that because they you know they've the way gaming trends have gone is all like oh it's got to be some big cinematic sort of big like blockbuster entry and i i just think that's kind of it doesn't really work well for like you can do it but it doesn't work well for um the gaming medium it like makes people forget about like this isn't uh a movie the thing that you know you know it's like the classic thing it's like use the medium how it's supposed to be used so like what's the unique thing about the gaming medium is player agency like they are in control they can do the things so rather than if you're watching a movie it's like imagine if you're using a movie with lots of exposition it's like it's stupid because you've got all of this like visual stuff you've got all of this audio stuff to convey so like use the medium as it's meant to be used so i just think in a game where it sort of like takes the kind of you know interactivity out of it or the sort of player agency out of it it's just you know worse off for it and these intros to elder scrolls games become so iconic you know like um you know the sewers and you're the one from my dreams and you know waking up on the back of that car become so iconic that i could never imagine them truly giving you branching paths because because then there's less people to talk about that start if that makes sense to be honest like i don't mind them having their like iconic start because there's a general rule like maybe skyrim amped it up a little bit but they have been pretty respectful of like your backstory or or whatever you want to do so it doesn't like limit you into who you want to be and i mean i guess that's when like with fallout 4 people got you know quite annoyed like including us that it does pigeonhole you a bit into being this you know person from yeah i'm from the past yeah and i'm i'm happy for them to do the prisoner start like 100 that's fine by me do the prisoners start um it's become a bit of a meme at this point but it is really cool and there are more things as well like definitely agree don't have some big predestined prophecy or backstory for the character um but if you did bring back something like classes that can actually help with role-playing more right like people look at that as if it's restrictive but to actually say i was a knight before and that's reflected in my starting skills that's that's actually a good thing you can stay and like if you look at oblivion they had custom classes right so you could just pick whatever skills you want you're not going to be limited to like oh this is how i have to play necessarily yeah well the problem with oblivion was it had all of the like minor major skills attributes or song but if you imagined it in literally just like skyrim but you just get boost to certain skills like imagine everything starts at five all of your skills and then you can boost certain ones like you know select like favorite skills almost like a fallout new vegas or something like a tag screen yeah and then that allows you to sort of give you an identity at the start rather you know what i mean and you can have a system like we've talked about this before you can have a system that does facilitate for the casual player who doesn't care about classes where you do just have it start like skyrim so you have one layer of stat altering things which is what race are you and they're not going to break the game like you can pick a wood elf and be a warrior we don't want a situation on our hands where if you pick an orc you have to be like this barbaric melee character right you still want to be anyone do anything but having those small bonuses will still make a difference especially then you get to add class bonuses on top of the race bonuses or for the casual just pick i don't want that and then they just kind of like evenly spread it more like we had in skyrim a bit you know where it's more just like your race bonuses and then evenly spread because i'm kind of like torn on a little bit because i do actually really like having meaningful race drawbacks and positives because that's actually like part of part of the fun is when you go in and you're playing something it's like oh like you feel more like an orc when you're like i'm gimped in this regard but i'm really good in this regard like it helps those statistical things and how are you actually i'll just chuck in a counter then a little well it's not really a counter i agree with you but the way that you work around that is at least i really like race bonuses that aren't actually like skill based because at the end of the day yeah you look at skyrim it's like a big deal you can get 100 in anything anyway and get all these perks if you want to so you may as well do the things that they were already doing especially when they did them heavier in previous games like morrowind where it's like resistance or sorry weakness to magic and you can make that like 50 percent you know depending on your race they they water down all of the race drawbacks and bonuses if they bring them back they don't have to necessarily relate to like what build you're playing obviously they do but it's not as hardcore as like oh this just affects skills and like you're just going to be really bad at one-handed if you're this race like because that's not really that meaningful right like it is i don't know it feels cooler to me when you have drawbacks that feel more like a standing stone you know how they're kind of to the side they're a bit different yeah they've got positives and negatives but they're not just like here are your skills you're bad at this good at this and especially because if you think about it you don't need that many skills to be good at whatever you choose right so like if the penalty is like oh but you've got five in all of this it's like okay i wasn't gonna use it anyway you know it's not actually a drawback that you feel like you'll carry into the game whereas when you have a system where your drawback is something like i i don't know 50 weakness to fire you've got that forever and that will play a role because then you'll meet some pyromancer who does heaps of damage and you'll feel it because i completely agree with all of the like the skills things not being as meaningful and that's why i think they shot themselves in the foot with the removal of attributes and i think attributes are actually really good and they because attributes are sort of like lines where you can kind of give a bit more flavor like especially if you can't increase your attributes ridiculously like it's harder to get them up and so on where the difference starting with 50 strength or 70 strength is a massive deal like that sort of gives the races more identi identity outside of just the like because those attributes gave passive effects anyway like in terms of regeneration of of stamina or what's called fatigue and oblivion but um you know and health and magicka that's bringing me back i remember how old were we when oblivion came out i just remember saying fatigue like i do yeah i didn't understand how to read it and i i was saying that for like too long yeah too long i mean what one thing i'd like about playing different races it's kind of a bit of a balancing act because i feel like you want to have it so that everyone can get a complete experience on their first play through but i also like the idea of races feeling physically drastically different so you know if i play a beast race i like the idea of kind of feeling like a beast you know in in morrowind for example not being able to put on certain helmets or you know or boots if you're an argonian or a khajiit or something i think it's kind of i i think they may be scared to do that nowadays because they wouldn't want anyone to be missing out on such a important part of the gameplay but i like the idea if i choose to play a khajiit this time it's more than just having a tail that clips through my armor you know there's there's some actual meaningful differences that make that oh my beast play through is much more interesting i mean i don't know about you guys but like in rpgs in general i i sort of like the fun is making the choice and having like a consequence with it you know ideally you know you want the planned sort of good consequences that you want but it there it is fun to have trade-offs because you can be like you know oh i'm a khajiit and then you've got max speed but then maybe you're extra fast than someone else with max because you've got beast feet and it's like oh my character has an edge over your character's experience and like i can do this special thing because i'm a khajiit like it makes you feel like oh my choice was worthwhile because you know i chose this and i'll say this you can see how weak sauce they've gotten if you think about it right we're sitting here going oh boots whoa like who cares man like you get your like besides aesthetic reasons right like you still want to look aesthetic but boots big deal like it's not a multiplayer game either so even if it was like oh you know you won't have the same armor rating or maybe a character who doesn't have beast feet technically when you make your god character has a little bit of an edge they have some enchanting slot or you know something that makes them a bit better who cares it's a single-player game it doesn't you know i like the positive and the drawback style and i don't think things like that are as scary or like a big deal as people think they are people aren't gonna freak out if they're argonian can't wear boots at least that's what i think i think it would just be like whatever well i mean like if you look at a wood elf you know some of their descriptions in the law you know imagine it being much smaller much more kind of animalistic looking potentially with horns or something like that could be can be way more nimble than the other races but then in skyrim sometimes you have to go right up to a bosma to notice it's not a dunmer because really they just get a lot of races just kind of start to look exactly the same without any real distinctions making them different you know there are very slight height differences i think in skyrim but they're they're fairly negligible well yeah the bosmer in like the male bosma used to be um really short like substantially like they were the shortest in this they're just i think female breton's the smallest in skyrim so they kind of like just got rid of it made them sort of similar height to female what else but like i mean i've always had canada as this is the explanation but sort of like um being those like little nimble hunters like they technically became like the alpha males by being smaller being able to jump around the trees and stuff and being better hunters because of it in their environment so they sort of it's kind of like a you know sort of like an evolutionary thing whereas actually being the smallest and most nimble was the best for that um scenario so that's why the the male wood elves was so short it also just maybe win so you go i was just gonna say when they leave their province you can understand how you know offspring may start to look less and less like that if they're not dealing with those environments anymore yeah which is you know is another way to kind of cope with the fact they're all a bit similar it's all an evolutionary take too especially in the elder scrolls though you can have like a mystical evolutionary take like you know like you see with argonians going elsewhere and changing you could have what else like oh these ones are taller here because this even though that wouldn't make sense on like our scale of how evolution works in the older scrolls universe maybe it does make sense and i also like just having the kind of polarity of like female what else being really tall and the male ones short it's just interesting like the more variety there is among the playable races it is it sounds funny but it's interesting yeah well yeah exactly it's a different culture you know it's like yeah that's what it's like yeah no i think i honestly before uh talking about all the like i would want them to bring back the racial disparities first so that there's a pros and cons to playing each but then before class i would actually go i would want them to bring back attributes first because i think attributes serve more functions in terms of like just potential like uh builds and gameplay and stuff like that whereas like so you know when you have a higher speed like you're like movement speed or attack speed or or whatever goes up or if you're trying to get willpower like i wouldn't even mind if they like shortened the list oh they have to be happy you wouldn't do the same thing twice you have to overhaul the attribute system not massively but like especially the way it leveled like whatever skills you used gave you like plus five bonuses and all that and and like one of the concepts that i actually liked from um cyberpunk was actually their the leveling system in the way that the attributes capped the skill progression so sort of imagine it's like you can only it's like trying to like imagine you can only get to 100 in one-handed if you've got say a hundred in like maybe agility or whatever governs it or something like that um and what that does is it makes the one hand getting that makes it seem like you are like the top master in the same way for example like if you go um you know like top fighters in the world are like top tier physically like attributes of top tier as well as their skill like it's both like you can't really if you but if you gave them two people the same skill but then one of them's way less physically um you know good it wouldn't you know what i mean that would be reflected in in the world but it also makes things like it incentivizes picking like different builds with attributes and it makes it worthwhile to sort of do you know what i mean like it to invest in those and it feels like it's more achieved to me it feels more restrictive because i i mean like i don't mind it but i prefer a system where you can both have a hundred in one-handed but one character will have more damage because they have higher strength it's like oh not only am i as skilled as you can get i'm also really strong compared to this other character so it has kind of the same variety if not more in that sense that every character with a hundred in one-handed also has a hundred and strengths or agility and does the same damage no like maybe not eat to to the degree that it has to be 100 100 like one-to-one but like a sort of some level of restriction even if it was maybe like an expert level okay so you can't have 20 in i don't know i'll use your example agility and then have a hundred in one handed like there's a base competency in the attribute that kind of makes sense yeah like but just basically because part of it like i also liked the idea that was kind of interesting in is that a lot of perks in cyberpunk um you in terms of like build variety upgraded with your attributes really it was about your attribute level and how that factored in like look cyberpunk system wasn't perfect or so on but i think they could look at these um look at these things and implement like pool attributes back like picking health magic of stamina and that's it sucks and then just skills it like perks like i think they could like reinvigorate the um the system quite a bit and i think attributes would be an important part because regardless of even any like you know skill attribute connection system there the attributes still at their core serve a function that makes your character stand out like you could be like if you imagine if almost works like special points and fallout kind of thing like you just start you have your orc and your awk default will have like a set a number of things where they might do you know what i mean like yeah i'm just i'm just getting scared i'm just thinking of like remember when fallout 4 came out and we said like oh guys there's no skills in fallout 4 and everyone's like yes there is your silly why would they take out skills because remember we were analyzing the pip boy yeah one of the trailers and then i'm just thinking now elder scrolls and they're like no more skills but it's like i've got high strength attribute i'm getting one-handed damage perks that sounds terrible to me but i do like the idea of using a system with both like i'm all good for both but or unless they just happen to have heaps of perks per attribute but definitely wouldn't want the fallout system yeah for sure yeah i i just mean in not i meant like fallout system as in like new vegas and stuff where you pick your specials like not that that determines the perks necessarily for oh yeah and then you have skills in addition yeah you'd have skills and your attribute stuff and then perks in the skill trees and stuff like that but then like you know like i you could even have extra like i i think i mentioned this to you before but you could do a system like to add extra variety kind of like almost what eso actually does that they have like a race skill tree and and then there's perks and stuff you can get in or per tree and if you had a similar thing like if you had a similar thing for attributes so you could have like you know there's a race one and then there's like you know you strength or whatever ones that sort of exist outside of the skills as well which add more variety and like things that because do you know how sometimes like you you want um like there's some things that don't really fit into a skill like a perk that would be really cool but doesn't really fit into a like one-handed or whatever like if it was able like not that you can pick up objects like like you could in deus ex or something but the whole idea that you know if you get um certain uh perks or whatever that you could pick up heavier things pick up a horse like like it's a car and just yeah or you know or they could add it all back as skills and they could be like oh he's your acrobatic skill your athletic skill you know you know what i i got to be honest i'm all in favor of more perks right so if there's all your perks as normal in skills and then there's also like you said like a kind of race perk tree but then there's also attribute based perks i kind of like that if it's all separate i just wouldn't want to water down what's already there but it was all separate that could be really cool because as we were talking about before you could have a system where it's like okay this is my character there's two characters both have a hundred and one-handed but only one of them has a hundred in strength so the payoff there is not just oh mine's more unique because he has more damage because more strength it's actually like my one-handed character is more unique because he has a strength perk you can't get that allows him to do some i don't know big rushing charge or like you know what i mean then you actually do start feeling different with the characters you're playing it's actually a fairly small thing from fallout but um i'd love to see traits come across because you know it doesn't seem like it's not as important as as many of the other things but um i really enjoyed picking traits for a character because it really felt like you kind of more than just giving them skills and abilities it gave them a strong personality as well you know they were very much tied to like you know you could have someone who's quite unhinged or you know hallucinate like the the wild wasteland one being a good example of just kind of like i know you could kind of make a slightly mad character without it drastically impacting the gameplay or someone who needs to wear glasses you know like yes to get the best benefit because you know like those kinds of things that are cool for sure like there's actually something you don't see in elder scrolls really glasses just feels weird i just started imagining elder scrolls characters with glasses and i'm like that's weird i definitely think traits are um good have you uh either of you played bannerlord too much at all not anything at all basically they have a really interesting system of character creation where um you start and you're basically just building a backstory so it's like oh what were you like as a as a where were you who were your parents what was your childhood like what was your teenager life like what did you do here so on and all of these different things so it might be like oh i was you know hunting in the wild or like you know take something to market or like i was training with a cavalry and that will actually decide like your starting sort of attributes and so on but i feel like a similar-ish kind of thing just some sort of system of like you don't have to play through the backstory or anything but if there was an option you could do it more broadly like the trait system but having traits built upon that you can kind of like so you know we could make up a backstory for a character but then there's like these traits that would fit into it that are sort of general you know what i mean so if it was a trait that like i was a merchant trait or something like that merchant trait or something like that but that trait then will you know it will work with your backstory and then actually have gameplay bonuses at the start i think that's pretty cool only thing i could see there going wrong is you do get restricted into like here's a bunch of like backstory choices you have to select from wherever you know that's why i mean i would say do it like the truth so it is just so merchant trait would say you used to be a merchant blah blah blah and you get whatever bonuses come with it because you can do it in a way with traits where kind of like you're saying some in the description might talk about your backstory and that's why or it might just be you know you're unhinged but not explain why um yeah i mean if you're picking a merchant trait i feel like that says you are a merchant i feel like then you know yeah then you were no you're a virgin that's why i'm saying you don't need to pick that's almost what i'm saying you don't need to pick like backstory paths for traits because it's important yeah no you don't yet but um still yeah like because i mean even earlier like if you think back to like mass effect i remember mass effect had like three different things and it's what cyberpunk was initially going to have like three different sort of things that just give your character a bit more that might not have to be like necessarily like defining things like for example like you know in cyberpunk the original 2018 demo and so i had like childhood hero like you could even if there's three three options or five options like you and i mean like that's not necessarily restrictive like you might have been like oh my childhood heroes ricky ponting or something like that but like that doesn't reflect your now but it would have had some sort of you know little bit of impact or something like that or or a fun little like you can play cricket in a quest wow yeah i mean when we talked before about the idea of having the kind of alternate start way of starting it it could somewhat be like cyberpunk where you can pick an alternate start while still having the iconic intro because you just get to a very similar starting point from your origins if that makes sense kind of like how in cyberpunk even though it's very poorly handled i think in the end you you get to jackie at some point regardless so meeting jackie is your start point but there are many different ways like even if it's quickly to get there um but you know unfortunately like that that could be hit or miss because i i didn't actually do it but i think like with the with the corpostar somehow you go from this kind of like mogul in a uh you know working at the top of a skyscraper to suddenly you're now like a street crime guy and it you know so it can kind of feel forced yeah so i guess it depends how it's handled the biggest thing with any of those decisions they've just got to like not rob the player of agency or pigeon hole them into something so it's like with the alternate start thing like that's you know when you're picking alternate start in skyrim or something that really just that gives you more freedom because it gives you more options of oh i just i'm a vampire in a lay here or i started from i'm a mercenary traveling from high rock or you know morrowind or something like that and that that's actually that's all that will give you more freedom i guess it's just the point is that with that sort of start that's designed to like go and you know explore the open world but you've got to like link back with the main story which is what they'll want to do so i think they will start everyone with some cinematic yeah and even if they don't though like you look at alternate stuff it's vague it's vague on purpose yeah yeah i i definitely i mean you look at crossing the border with the storm clerks it sounds quite specific but you can kind of like mental gymnastic your way around that because it's nowhere near as bad as fallout where it's like this is who you were in your past life and like you know if you're a male you're in the military and so on i think people are like they've got to learn like well what game they're they're making like if you're playing like at the big open world be whoever you want just go and do whatever you want that's so much better when it's vague whereas whenever you start creating a sort of like if you can also like there are good rpgs out there that are like you know like knight seal or public series and even you even new vegas to a degree you have a courier backstory and you've sort of got a little bit more pushed in a direction but you're i don't know that's like when i play new vegas i'm playing it for like this the choices and the outcomes and the factions like uh it's it's different to the sort of i'm just going to go in you know skyrim and shoot some deer and train my magicker up it's a different feeling it's the open world versus even though new vegas is an open world but it's it's the way it sort of uh funnels you in into into the experience rather than it's different you're not playing new vegas to explore the desert you know what i mean like but in skyrim you're exploring oh what's behind that corner or some loot here or whatever and like you know oh maybe there's a cool quest here it's it's a different sort of mentality behind it i think when both are good you've just got to learn which one you're going to do i think at the end of the day a lot of you know regardless of what your start is you can suspend some disbelief but there's one thing that will always be the thing that kind of ruins your ability to play a character and that will be a voice protagonist so if if we have voice protagonists no matter i really think no matter how they do it it will really limit your ability to role play a character because you saw it with fallout 4 to an extent and especially with cyberpunk it was one of my gripes with cyberpunk is that if you play a male character you pretty much have to be like some new york kid with you know who you can't play a very you can't really play a very well educated character you can't play a kind of i mean you pretty much can't play anything but this new york kid and in fallout 4 it's slightly hard to be unhinged when you've got this really nice posh voice you know um so these things will limit you no matter what the start is i wonder whether they'll do it i guess is a question yeah i mean i i don't think they will because there's too many races like with all the different accents okay like unless you're like you know what i mean like you know if you're doing a male and a female you've got all of the potential because it's not just npc lines you're taking voiced lines and you've got to make you know you have to make at least one for pretty much you know maybe you get away with like high elf and wood elf being the same or like bretton imperial having the same voice but you know khajiit's got a very distinct voice argonian's got a very distinct voice orcs do and you have to do each gender for either it's like literally voice acting you know 20 you know potentially worse that's the thing yeah like they'd be looking at this is what we have to do and be thinking is it even worth the payoff like even if it was easy is it worth it like it's not easy but even if it was like imagine you can't be an old person anymore you know these little things like because your voice sounds young you can't imagine that you know your voice is is really deep or light or you know or that your vocal cords are torn because you've been screaming in a war for the last 10 years or and it works against the choice in the way that like if you if you want to give a player a bunch of different options and some of them are like evil maniacal options and all and one of them's like this you know like you're saying like well educated or whatever a bunch of different options that are going to kind of like come from different characters who would sound different like if you have no voice acting you can just you can just do that with writing new options with text whereas if you've got a voice you've got to have the same voice actor sort of change in a way and then you have that like weird jarring kind of thing that happens in some of the games like fallout 4 and times where you like you you say something and you sound like some you know jersey or whatever some boston-born kid kind of thing but then the next line you say because you choose the sarcastic option or the or the negative option you just it sounds so out of place because like a second ago you were like this like jovial sort of like you know boston kid kind of thing and then next your i'm the evil kind of thing like that was what was jarring and i understand what they tried to do with with nuka world they tried to implement more choice and and basically being able to be evil and so on but it just almost feels jarring for your character because you come out you're like oh i've got to find sean my son and and you're going off doing all your stuff and all your options are limited but then in this one area you turn into this like evil mastermind kind of guy you don't know but even if it was done right which would have been a much better game experience right like if if there were more choices even in fallout 4 and how you can react to things it would have been better but even then the fact that not every dialogue option has a choice right like there are some dialogue unless they did that but they wouldn't so there are some dialogue lines where you just enter conversation and like you have to say this one line so if it is that like you're saying this line where you enter and you say like all these nice things and then your choice options come up and then you press evil because you're an evil character it's just i don't know it also kind of kills the nuance in a lot of situations to have like three buttons to press and one's good one's evil one's this one's that you know like yeah there's no kind of like oh i'm not just black and white i want to pick this one this time and this this time without it sounding funny and like you see there's fun those like funny skits and stuff and like animations and so on around it's like you pick an option and then like you pick the like negative option it's like i'm gonna do it i'm gonna kill you it's like this super like over violent reaction like you didn't want to pick but you've only got two options like blue or red and if you pick the red one it's like you know deadly and like i had that happen to me once in witcher in my first playthrough with kirimets i can't say the dialogue option i picked because uh it will get demonetised but yeah it didn't end up well and i did not think it would be bad at all and it was like the worst thing yeah yeah i think overall voice protagonists only work if you are having a character who is fixed like geralt or adam jensen or something like that so it's kind of like the direction you're taking their story because when you play a game like that you're not trying to invent a new character you're just kind of got your decisions spin on the character that you're playing so it's different whereas when you're playing a game like you know elder scrolls like the big the big sell is that you can be whoever you want in this other world you know and go off and do things so if they limit to who you can be it's it's not good it's not good at all but let's uh as we'll say because we're all on webcams here it feels like i'm on some corporate zoom meeting let's circle back to elder scrolls six yeah well how about this for elder scrolls six settlement building oh no uh you know what i can guarantee they're gonna have especially with like a high rock type setting but like a more robust sort of house building yeah kind of system do you know what changed my mind on the biggest problem with settlement building in flight four is that they removed they they built the whole like quest line around and they sort of removed a lot of um towns and potential towns and stuff that could have been unique but if it is truly an addition like i downloaded this my i forgot it was it was something like big mana mod thing um that was in like a folk wreath uh forest area for in in skyrim but if you actually go in a playthrough and you start off and you've built like you know you've got your little house and you build it up and you hire new people and village and you sort of like build this little bit of feudal land it's actually a really fun experience if it's not like oh we're just going to replace folk wreath with this you know different city you know what i mean it's basically just the opportunity cost but in addition it does actually enhance role playing in a way in the way that if you want to become like you know a minor lord kind of thing and have your own manner and like so on it does actually fulfill that and even if the options were like you know there's one spot in each kingdom of high rock where you can kind of establish your own kingdom ascent or like you know or a lordship or something and you kind of serve the king of that region that wouldn't be like fallout where it very much felt like settlement building was an excuse to not build up these towns because you'd build up all the towns but if there's just one spot you know you can kind of pick your faction essentially and and become a bit of a lord in that area then it doesn't really take away from the other environments you'll come across i feel like that's a really good way to do it as well just because it could work well with the story like people are like oh i want to be king or whatever and sometimes for like sort of world story reasons it doesn't always work out the best that that's the case because when you're a king you have like ridiculous responsibilities and all these other things it doesn't make sense that you're off just like you know killing goblins in a mine but if you are if you can kind of get to the state where you are a minor lord so like just imagine literally the skyrim scenario but when you become um thane that you actually get granted a parcel of land or whatever and then you can build on it and and do whatever you like for it and it would actually it would be a cool sort of uh consequence kind of thing if you could only like you know in a game if that you could only become like a fan of one place or like really like pledge allegiance to sort of like one of the groups do you know what i mean instead of being able to be like i'm a faint of everywhere and so on like you know yeah you're pretty much the most influential person in skyrim at that point just thing of everything dragonborn like like super high leader in one of the civil war factions like head of all factions in general it does get a bit like that and i mean i guess what you're proposing anyway is kind of like what half fire was just expanded to more areas with more limited choice in where you can build like um sorry which area you get to have your residence in um and i guess with high rock specifically it does play well into their whole what is it find a hill and become a king thing yeah the whole the whole vibe of um you know becoming powerful and acquiring a good life for yourself if you have the ambition to do so it's very britain but it's gonna be i was gonna say it's gotta be like sort of like an optional thing too like it will really suck if it is this like even if you if you default if you're gonna become like you'll get a lord title at some point throughout the main or whatever with with something like that you kind of want it to be like you can just oh cool i've got a little bit of land do nothing with it like don't integrate it into the story because if i'm playing an assassin like if i'm playing some dark brotherhood culti assassin like i might just want to buy a small house in like some quiet area or something i don't want to build a grand castle don't shove me into making some grand castle you know what i mean or being a lord of land yeah or like you're disadvantaged if you don't it's kind of just like do you know what you should be able to reject it that's such a simple choice but imagine if if the y'all is like oh i make you name you thane of whiterun and then you can actually go like no i actually reject it i don't want this this thing and that would be it's such a simple choice but it would um it would increase your uh role-playing yeah that's kind of that's kind of like what i was going to suggest because you know if you become the fan of every um city in skyrim it's it's not the biggest deal but in high rock where you imagine there's a lot of politics between the kingdoms and they're all vying against one another the um if you want to raise your standing in one faction being able to deny another one while not being locked out of their quests would be a good way to go whereas if you already have you know like a a barony or something in daggerfall and then you're you know you're working for the king of way rest and he's like pretty sure you're you know you're you've got a pretty good relationship with their king i don't really trust you that would be a good way to get into the high rock politics yeah yeah absolutely and like even like you could always say the option too like it some people might see this as just restrictive but there's you've kind of got a balance of like what's restrictive or what's choice and consequence you know so it's like if you do maybe um you can actually switch like but to the king of way rest and become barren of their but it's going to cost you the barony of of the other place like you can only have one at a time you want to mean like to you know what i mean like it's an actual image of a legion imagine if the house you kind of built there is still standing but some other npc thing owns it and like if you go there it is hostile territory and you're kind of like but i built this that's my alchemy room i wanted there but it would be it's just a yeah and it's just another example of like you know um for a second third fourth play through it's like oh i chose that um barony this time i'm gonna choose a different one this time rather than oh i was faint of every um you know every hold i don't really need to be faint of this whole next time it's the kind of thing in like morrowind too where it kind of uh makes your love for a faction grow more so when you're like you you know you have your like estate stronghold kind of thing if you're like um halalu or radaran or or you're literally making a televani tower if you're a telwani wizard like it kind of really makes you feel like you're part of the faction because you're like you'll and you're and it's also it gives you something to to work towards as well yeah like you and i mean that because a lot of the time you you know in skyrim you'll just end up with thousands of dollars and not do anything with it like there's nothing you need to buy i will say i will say on that topic i really hope in order to scroll six we have more joinable factions like morrowind where they kind of any class could like well there were multiple factions for the same class but they had differing ideologies or philosophies so like if you're a mage you don't have to join the college of winterhold you can join this other magic guild that's very different philosophically and perhaps they're even enemies so if you join one you can't join the other yeah you know and that also encourages replayability because that's the other thing i think the choice is like the consequence is what kind of makes it a actual meaningful choice because it doesn't really feel like as much of a choice if you can join every single guild like if you imagine in skyrim if you joined just for sake of example not this isn't the ideal one but if say if you could join um the thieves guild but then can't join the dark brotherhood because they don't like the dark brotherhood joining the thieves guild now feels ten times more meaningful because of what you're giving up to join them so like the actual consequence or or negative aspects of joining certain things in the same way it's like you know what we're talking about before with races if you pick a race you choosing to get the benefits of ork will give you these drawbacks but those benefits kind of like that choice like it feels better knowing what you lost you missed out on being some super magical high elf or something like that like it's actually the thing that you're missing out on which makes it seem more meaningful because it's an opportunity cost you know and i mean todd said we want this game to be played for a decade which to be honest even if they didn't want that that would be the case because it's going to be another decade before the next one but but you know if you want that then this is exactly what you should encourage don't have everyone achieve everything in one play through yeah um if you yeah if you wanted to last for 10 years that's the way to do it yeah absolutely absolutely and and it's like for the i guess the aspects of people who like i mean look i don't relate to anyone who who does one playthrough of skyrim i don't think anyone listening to this podcast really relates either to just wanting to do one play through like they get off and like being all these different characters and builds and all this play through and i'll do that and like do you know what i mean like an and exploration instead of having this sort of it's not like a you know a ubisoft game where you're going to check off every area of the map like you might for it it's a fun experience when you play a character but then because this builds different you're doing different things and then you actually discover this whole new area that you wouldn't have otherwise really thought to have engaged with so it's like a classic sort of example i guess would be like an assassin like finding a little different path because you're trying to sneak around whereas if you never try to sneak you might miss out like on a bunch of different you know alleyways and stuff but like it it's kind of the the world i don't feel like it has to be a situation where you where you can make some god character that's everything i i like overpowered characters too like it's fun to try and make a bit i actually like it when it's a challenging i'm like it really kind of annoyed me in the outer worlds where it's like i basically made a god character straight away and like my incentive to replay outside it did have some other fun play styles and so on but it's too easy like you actually want it to be a challenge to to become it because then it feels like you've earned it to become a god character you know what i mean if it's possible like you don't actually want it to be even be possible but hyper powerful you know what i mean but they've still got to be missing on maybe they're just missing that 10 they can't be like you know what i mean like yeah i i just think it's choice and consequence is super powerful and and like in in skyrim like a lot of people criticize like they elders like skyrim and oblivion for not having uh much choice and consequence because they go oh not an rpg or whatever which it's just not true it's it's different the way it works is you're the choice like obviously they should have both like choice within the guild storylines like you have actual like agency but it's what it's about the choice is sort of who you want to be and where you want to go like you can go and be just an assassin and just do the dark brotherhood storyline or you can just go and worship the danger and be a daedra worshiper and do all the date requests or something like that you're not actually whereas things that are more linear have to provide you a choice on the path like which one or optimally you want both but it is ironic that cyberpunk has less choice than skyrim in the sense that skyrim is not even designed in the way that skyrim is not designed to have choice like those areas like the faction like actual choices where it's like this or that not just who you want to be and skyrim still has more like will you spare cicero like by no means to skyrim a game that's like you know uh respected highly in that department of choice at all but there's still more which side of the floor you want like there's types of little things yeah but it's like if you if your goal is you just want to go and buy and sell things and loot dungeons until you have enough money to have your mana and set up your alchemical thing like you can do that like you know you can choose all of these different yeah that it's choice of path it is a choice on the path and and that's what skyrim is you know better with and and i guess you could say it's um so i'm just having a mind blank well it's a different um it's a different uh approach of the game it's like understanding i guess like you that what your game is going to be at first like like if you're trying to tell like a very impactful story like look let's be frank like elder scrolls like skyrim doesn't have these ridiculously you know amazing narratives that are all complex and so on and so but that's not what the game's setting out to do it's it's just setting you you're setting out to be whoever you want whereas if you want to have a sort of narrative more narrative driven thing you kind of need to like put the the player on the path a bit more and you know what i mean like then also the choices and consequences in the path become more important because you're not really i guess like new vegas is an actual example of a proper like more hybrid sort of one because you're not at least i'm not really playing new vegas to like be whoever i want you're kind of making faction decisions like you are whoever you want on a on a level but you're kind of engaging with the story in the world whereas in the elder scrolls you can kind of not you can just choose to not engage with the world because well engage with the factions but then you you're still engaging with all of the open world stuff that there is or the dungeons to explore all of the things to find in nooks and crannies or just you know or the city life do you know what i mean like it's got a different there is a different um purpose behind the game i feel like originally it's yeah well yeah there's like there's kind of a sense of urgency i guess that you know it depends it's kind of it's very good to have your choices while this this can be seen as a negative have your choices have serious physical impacts and that's with new vegas it's that if you side with this faction they will be the preeminent faction at the end of the day and it can see other factions completely get wiped out um whereas you know as we've kind of alluded to with skyrim um you can choose at any point really to engage with any of the groups and and see their quest lines through and they'll never like really overlap and um i mean that that would be another good thing about you know if you pick to go with the thieves guild you can completely see the dark brotherhood get destroyed whereas otherwise they may have been you know risen back into prosperity and to clarify on that point like when this is what we've suggested in in like the ideal elder scrolls six video from like years ago and all kinds of things is is that like obviously i don't actually want that degree it would be best if you had something like simple as um thieves guild storyline you started and then you could have like a you could either have a system where you could go with mercer and like become like a greedy sort of one or you can become like a bit more like yeah pro nocturnal nightingale with brinjal from carlisa you can take it in one of two directions or alternatively you can have it where a bit more like morrowind where you had two guilds for the same-ish thing so you have the telvanni and the mages guild and they're kind of like they're different choices of a similar function or rhetorian and fighters guild or it's not an exact comparison of flallow and thieves guild but you know what i mean you know you can have both if you think about it you can have the option of if it's mages guild and talvani and then you still get to shape the mages guild in their own way yeah i mean or you can have like what skyrim should have been with the companions where you actually get to join the silver hand and be anti-werewolf instead of you know join the circle after one main mission for the faction absolutely like i want to make it clear we're not like defending skyrims like saying it's like it's the grand master of choice like a lot of your choice happens on your end of like oh i'm going to play this kind of character that does these quests or so on it's like choice of part like obviously we want elder scrolls 6 to have more choice like that you you play through a guild and then there's sort of like even a binary option of where you're going to help this one or this one and that will shape the outcome of that that guild well i think a lot of these problems they tend to be compromises from a like a game development standpoint you know like they probably you know in an ideal world if you spoke to all of the devs they'd be like yeah we want the silver hand to be playable so you can pick between the two but um you know maybe with elder scrolls six given the amount of time there's been to work on it a lot of this stuff will be there which you know fingers crossed um but yeah i mean like you know on that topic as well it's one of those things i was thinking about when it came to scale because i i used to one of my bigger problems with skyrim is walking into whiterun and realizing that oh this there's about 15 buildings in this whole giant city yeah but then at the same time i kind of you kind of have to measure your expectations in that cyberpunk you know i don't want to just rag on cyberpunk but it's an example of a really expansive world where it was just as shallow as you know shallow as a puddle where skyrim is much smaller but everything had depth you know there were nameless npcs but in almost all cases anyone you ran into there was something interesting about them something to learn something to do um so i guess you kind of need to find that middle ground well like i don't even mind like i i for feeling that like i never forgot the feeling that like nova grad in which it was like a poor city like i thought it was cool because there were still areas of interaction so like even in the cyberpunk example if there were lots of hubs where it's like okay there's a bunch of hubs all around the city of these characters you can you know so say you go to this like you know there's the tiger claws headquarters club and you can go in there and there's like a bunch of characters you can interact with even though when you come out of that there's just going to be a lot of random npcs there's still you've got that the problem with cyberpunk was that all of the characters that are worthwhile interacting with are only on the mainline sort of story or like sort of the a few of the side story quests but like outside of that there's no one to interact with there's not even like in in a meaningful way kind of like you know what i mean it kind of i guess builds the world so you you'll never meet really any of the heads of the um of the of the different gangs or factions or people or so on and like the whole phone call system works poorly i think you know like because hey it was annoying as hell getting rung up all the time but you never like some of the characters had potential but you never really meet them in person until like the the very end or like if you went in there and saw the environment they're in you're vibing with who that person is you understand what they're about like from what you're seeing it's like the classic thing it's like gaming is also a visual medium too like show don't tell like having a guy come up on the phone and go blah blah blah i'm this person i'm your handler for here i'll do this it doesn't feel as good you don't understand it as much as when you first walk into the thieves guild and there's all of the different characters around the bar and one of them's british for whatever reason the delving guy and then like and then there's brinyoff talking to another character and it's creating an environment they had that in parts of the main story like in the afterlife and so on but that's why they're the highlights but the rest of it it doesn't sort of you know it's it's kind of it's giving them going i was gonna say it's kind of like the opposite of uh why npcs are memorable and oblivion you know with the face zoom in and you just like get really in their face just take that and like make their face really small on the screen and you never really meet them and that's yeah that's why you know you got to meet these characters you got to see the expression on their face and actually have because that's the other thing if you think about phone call system and we won't dwell on this for too long because it's not exactly older scroll six related we're not gonna have magical telepathy phone calls and that become a problem but there's not even as much dialogue to pick like when you're in person you kind of sit there and you're like i'm going to say this out of like four choices but if someone rings you and says oh we need you to handle this problem you're not going to be like tell me about your establishment like you just not because you're there to do a job they called you to give you a task and that's it it's one of the really important things about the day night cycle of the characters so you know a recent video you made michael where you kind of like explored how tragic windhelm is as a city it's you know it's not a giant city but all of these characters they have their quest lines to explore but you don't necessarily find them in the exact same spot every time waiting for you to interact with them kind of like how the phone call would work you know you could come across them in the market you could they could be at work they could be at home all of these things like just every character it feels like if you weren't there you're imagining the city you're imagining them getting on with their lives um whereas you know in a not just cyberpunk in a lot of games um they literally only exist in your visual in your peripherals you know only if you're looking at them it's so crazy it's cyber funk that they literally don't exist if you turn around like that's like it's so like such a next level yeah the police were very like that they just spawn everywhere yeah but um but um yeah so if they can upscale that you know keep their way of doing things but make it larger yeah like as you said with the witcher you could have you know nameless npcs just wandering around to fill it out but still have your your big cast of characters that just get on with their lives on an opposite on a higher scale the other thing too is like really they kind of do have um npcs like that in skyrim anyway where you but but they become memorable because they've only got to utter utter a line or two but like you know nazim and where to get the clouds cloud district you do not interact with him at all in terms of like dialogue and all he does is just wander around it out of those lines that's it but you create character it creates atmospheres like oh do you get to the cloud district don't even know you know the cloud district wasn't exactly well executed because it's small like like skyrim would be in in a too small bucket but if you expanded it you you kind of like you know you could kind of like double or triple like probably triple the npcs and so on and then add a bunch of like you know you just got to give them a randomly generated like you know red guard kind of sounding name and and maybe a line or something maybe they they utter it about like oh my work at the fisheries killing me or something like that but it does um they they use that a lot in skyrim and i'll take it one step further you don't even need to give them names like if you do want to have those generic npcs you take it beyond what cyberpunk did just give them a roll you look at them it says farmer like they had like farmer and you talk to them and maybe they're just walking on the road and they just say something like you know my crops like died this year was such a harsh winter and i'm going here to do this and you may not ever see them where they say they're going but it is just a way of adding a character into the world that isn't really a character that you have anything to do with but it still expands the world building you they don't just walk past you on the road with no name even if the name is just what their role is right yeah like i'm a farmer i'm a courier i'm a merchant this and that you need that yeah yeah and i think the good thing is they've they've got all of this microsoft money behind them now so hopefully there's a lot of like stuff that they can actually do like we won't be living on a system where you can like you got to go through a loading screen and like it's kind of crazy like how hot your computer and over burnt the computer gets on playing skyrim super modded up by comparison to playing modern optimized games that are way more graphically impressive but it runs just fine because it's you know it's it's all good it's built to run you know yeah but yeah i mean uh this is you know i guess a big question but i feel that we might all be in agreement for it but in terms of the story for elder scrolls six who do you think is going to be the big bad do you think it'll be the foul more i i think they're running with a thou more kind of thing like i i think if they really because i heard somewhere i heard this i don't have duties but like it's the last mainline elder scrolls thing or slightly like that and they want to last make it last for 10 years becoming franchise i don't i don't know like i i like i i kind of don't want another metaphysical just like oh like you know shoehorning alden in like oh let's put in like santa claus some other world ending thing like i i i prefer like the thalmor i would rather some more human enemies like for example like the real enemy in uh oblivion is mankind cameron like that's who you're really fighting because he he's the voice for the big evil god or whatever but there's a person behind it there's a prophet there's a sort of he's like the the tangible sort of enemy that you kind of i remember to about more and i relate to and it was like there was like a good parts of the story when you're sort of building up and uncovering his plot and so on and he's he's got all this cool exposition and stuff like evil monologues it's the same way that like you know you know a mana marco kind of thing or or some kind of powerful but still human but when you when you get to the sort of alduin kind of thing they become kind of like disembodied they're way more like evil force god like they feel like less of a person you know well they are not they are but even what i'm saying is like even though they can speak and so on they're just less uh characterized because they're just force embodiments like this what i'm saying they're not they're not a person like yeah that that's the thing whereas if you have a person behind the dark force then that's fine because it kind of adds some character to it like with mankind cameron i mean for older scroll six i really could see the towers like kind of idea that we've been going with in some of our videos go through really well because then you can have exactly what you're describing the kind of scary element is you know they're trying to undo the world but at the end of the day there's a human person or perhaps even just the party you know kind of like five really elite secret thermal dudes at the top doing their thing yeah yeah because if this centers around the iliac bay i'm like fairly certain it'll it'll involve the durani and um you know we've got information about the adamantine tower obviously it's like the first tower of creation and the zero stone and and i know like initially it felt like you had to subscribe to the undoing the towers theory for this to be the main story but even in eso they've added some kind of interesting stuff regarding the the tower and the zero stone like there's a little thing i i found here that was from a text in eso that says we cannot solve the mystery of the zero stone and use it to open the argent aperture which it wards at maturity every durani of high blood is brought into the tower conducted to the foundation vault and shown the zero stone we are allowed to touch it once so as to feel the transcendent mystical power that courses through it a power we have never been able to tap and we are shown the argent aperture in the adjacent metallic wall that door with its lock of 13 slowly counter rotating rings a portal we've never been able to open and it's like as if we're not going to be like opening that portal in the elder scrolls six that's what i think is going to be the case no i and i and you've got to think of the innovation too like they're probably going to add in boat travel and stuff so you can imagine the whole iliac bay being a good um and i mean to be honest like they have the resources like sometimes with the ub stuff like assassin's creed games i get kind of surprised at how big they are and like how much stuff and but not just a it's not just endless grass like they are pretty like fresh and unique like each place like this you know like what you'd expect in a um elder scrolls like each region sort of being distinct so you can i can i can kind of imagine opening a map and then having like you know hammerfell and then the iliac pay and then high rock at the top and it is literally all of you could especially when you hear the quotes from todd howard where he was saying things like oh how ambitious he wants it to be and like you've got to think like what games am i going to make before i die and like you know these this is not being possible on old technology as well you know like you can imagine um big open seas kind of stross makai pirates getting involved things like this um yeah there's a lot of potent there's just so much potential to have really diverse regions and biomes without it kind of like somewhat weirdly meshing the way it it had to in skyrim you know if they can get if they can get the the grand scale that it sounds like they're going for yeah but i think the good thing about the towers story if they do go with that whole being the plot it points towards not being some sword singer born kind of like kind of thing you know what i mean like because the premise of drag of skyrim was there's dragons and then like oh how do we get people to fight all the drags oh you're dragonborn you've got to kill all the dragons like that was a big um cornerstone of like the premise you know what i mean whereas if this is the premise it's like oh there's this big evil elven organization and the higher echelons want to unmake the world kind of thing it facilitates a bit more of a you could be a normal person storyline do you think we'll see dragons i reckon they might put in some like easter egg enemies kind of things like just a few but not maybe like nafala lagus comes back or something like that the the dragon from stros makai the imperial one yeah i mean he was killed by cyrus but that doesn't actually you know with a dragon it doesn't really mean much yeah i could definitely see there being a few you know like how in black reach there's a dragon like it's like people love dragons too much for them not to include like you know because especially when some people like oh you're looking forward to skyrim too for a lot of people it's just yeah look you know you can count on bethesda you can count on it even if elder scrolls six is the best game ever you can count on them putting in things that don't necessarily have to be there or shouldn't be there just for the sake of you know pleasing the fans the same way the brotherhood of steel is in fallout 76 it doesn't mean that it's going to ruin the game or overtake the whole thing it's not going to be you're the dragonborn again kill all the dragons but yeah i can almost or will it but you know yeah you can imagine there'll be a few only problem with that in the whole brand thing is it just stops innovation where it's like it's like the kind of thing i will be disappointed if there is only the dark brotherhood and that's it if they're like oh the dark brotherhood's here back again that's it like there's never i'd say that's highly plausible that they do that i i agree with you that it's not the right choice but like don't think that that won't happen but then again but then again like as much as there's that they did innovate with the college of winterhold of companions now they weren't the best kill factions but they were unique they weren't fighters guild they weren't mages guild and they did also like you know expand the law surrounding it and and like that's that's all i i hope they do is just actually expand the law of hammerfell and high rock and like you know you know what i mean like find your morag tong equivalents or whatever like have um you know you could have did it you could have ideal elders yeah yeah you can but you're just adding more to them and if you give them a choice of oh you have both they're going to pick the familiar one so that's how you end up with the brotherhood of steel and fallout 76 and all this kind of stuff and it's just kind of like just how instead just actually like people are gonna buy your game period they're not dark brotherhood is not the make or break it they're buying it because it's a bethesda elder scrolls big open world fantasy adventure if you put in a unique assassin's guild or like something fresh or new like people won't go like no not getting it yeah of course but they still like doing it i look just don't be surprised what i'm just saying if i was just saying if it was up to me if they came to me it's like look we're um i would rather than build the other one first if they want to add the dark brotherhood dark brotherhood in addition like that's cool because then it's like you know more better but like if they have to cut one like do with the new one and do the put in the new one yeah i agree yeah definitely because same same for a lot of the guilds like when they don't make sense being there like the dark brotherhood wouldn't really if it was set right off the skyrim i mean a lot of the another thing to bring up and talk about it is a lot of the other we've been talking like a lot of the things we like and want in the game are for role-playing reasons because we're really into the role-playing side of things obviously in the lore and so on one in in terms of role-playing one thing that they they've got to add it's not just like factions and stuff either some of it needs to be in like what you can do and who could be so sort of like for example just being able to be like a spearman versus acts like you know weapon variety and you know transport variety like if you do have the iliac bay and you do have a boat and everything and you can be like some like sailboat kind of guy now you can play a pirate character really authentically you're not just an ex-pirate who's now landlocked on skyrim you could actually be a pirate and that adds a whole new role-playing dynamic and then to say you know what i mean yeah i do although i will say i feel like it definitely in that scenario you could see a case where everyone just becomes a pirate because it's like oh there's these landmasses out here with luke what am i not going to go there because it's not a pirate no no no no no not the land masses but that's just travel i mean like actually acting out and like attacking enemy um attacking ships oh just sounds fun i just feel like everyone would do it well you know there's the other side to it where it's like you know obviously i see what you get at michael you wouldn't want to miss out on sailing yeah no way just because you don't want to be a pirate but if you know if there is a focus on some of the high rock factions you could be more like the kind of naval this is your kingdom's um navy versus the pirate menace or whatever coming and you can kind of perhaps be involved on on either side of that and look you won't miss out i would say it's like if you're playing a dark evil character like you might go i'm not going to do the companions well you're missing out on the companions but and being a werewolf and all that it's just the opportunity cost you play the game again i'm going to do a pirate play through or i'm going to do it this one over like you wanted me oh i agree with the premise i just feel like it's more like um as much as different characters explore different areas i feel like a lot of people do explore the entire map with their first character no yeah but i mean i will the pirating thing like it could even be tied to a guild or something or like some sort of pirate planet but it's like what i'm just trying to say is that there would be there's gameplay functionality for to to live out certain roles like expanding that is quite important more so even than like then just um just factions it's just what you can on an individual level um do you know yeah i mean it's just like getting from daggerfall to sentinel if both of those cities are in the game you know rather than going around you know you'd say lacrosse even if you're not playing a pirate character and things like that there's there'll be plenty of reasons to get out there but yeah you know have some mounts i bet there's a lot of small things like you know it's a lot of details but the whole idea that you can put on horse armor does allow you now to be like this nightly you know horse oriented character it'd be cool and especially considering like i'm sure they will have you know um ai on horses and and running around you know attacking you on horses like that would be mad it's crazy awesome sorry it's a bit it's a bit unrelated but it's crazy to think just how far cosmetics in games have come like the fact that that was a huge meme how much were they selling horse armor for like five dollars or so it was something like something like that yeah it was like five australian so like three or four american whatever whatever the case but like look at games now like 20 for this skin 20 for that skin in heaps of games i mean i don't actually buy them but yeah you can see how like by comparison it's actually so small bethesda in a lot of ways pioneered the whole dlc kind of thing like the only thing i like this is i can only really get behind dlc when it is like an expansion of where okay we've done the main experience now we're going to do this extra thing so like in an oblivion instance it's like the shivering aisles or like you know people missed that they didn't have the sort of craziness of morrowind and stuff like that let's do this you know dlc that gives them a whole new experience but it's very like this obviously didn't wasn't designed to be in the main game but a lot of dlc just gets these days is just stuff that just should have been in the main game or like adding in weapons and stuff it's like their examples it's different if it's a weapon from the shivering isles because that's building out this world versus if they give you a shivering aisles weapon pack do you know what i mean well that's the thing with the creation club like with skyrim obviously the creation club didn't go down brilliantly well but you can live with it because the game came out a long time ago as complete or everything added as a result of the creation club it gave you something new but you didn't feel like anything was taken off you and then sold back to you whereas if the creation club is implemented immediately with elder scrolls six there's no way that anything sold on that creation club wouldn't have been better if you found it in a dungeon there's there's just no way so it's i wonder how they're gonna i agree i've heard like an og uh memory and like yeah if you're back in the day if you played skyrim when it came out you'll remember some things but there were no ranged kill cams straight away there was no mounted combat at all like there was a few things that they were actually adding in free updates and stuff like in updates like just sort of you know fixing up the game which is cool but like i found the horse armor it was 2.50 and it was outcry well i think the thing is i actually think they will be very good with it because they're you know fallout 76 more so eso but they're their ways of making money that way whereas i think elder scrolls six will be purely about getting their reputation back up to the heights it once was you know they don't need to highly monetize the older scroll six when you've got highly monetized eso that's just a constant source of cosmetic sales i feel like that's really good if that's true but i feel like the last thing a corporation does is like we've got enough things monitored i mean but they did they also did just get bought by like microsoft software yeah i just want them to make a sick game that's i just want a really good game especially looking after what's happened to cd projekt and cyberpunk um and so on like yeah i feel like they'll really want to like they need in these modern day to have that like good guy sort of thing and they've got starfield first so that may give us some clues as to where they're going and how you know how things are coming along i don't have the highest expectations for star field so i hope i'm pleasantly surprised it just feels very like you know buzz aldrin in space and there's like no aliens or anything like i don't know if this is saying anything but throughout this conversation i've completely forgotten about star field altogether yeah you know i just like um it's not the most you know obviously they haven't shown us much but it's not quite so memorable yet no i hope it is some turnaround like you look at it and then it's like you think it's going to be some like you know boring kind of space kind of exploration thing but then it turns out to be some like full mass effect a warhammer 40k kind of vibe like level of like basically put just put some fantastical elements in there because i don't know man space is kind of boring it's everything's white it's just this plain like white painted ships white painted astronaut costumes yeah i've got a jet pack yeah like i really it's not i don't know it's not inspiring and i feel like it's misplaced creativity they've got to put some of that into like you know you can't just be roaming an asteroid like digging up you know space ore yeah like have you seen some of those kind of like frank rosetta art pieces where it's like you know these kind of like almost like nights in space and there's like colorful moons and all of that yeah you want to be like full of life and color yeah sort of 70s sci-fi fantasy kind of yeah like um john carter on mars type of stuff like or all of that like just the the more creative it's it's basically fantasy in space but yeah but that's why i like i would prefer star wars over star trek because it's fantasy and space as opposed to just like we've gotta get to the xml system to uh fix their uh i don't know echo chambers or whatever the hell like you know what i mean yeah i mean star trek is definitely still kind of fantasy in space just way less with aliens yeah but it's just it's kind of like the uh yeah it's a bit more clinical oh yeah it's clean you know you don't want us i don't like sci-fi to be too clean it's what gets me off yeah i don't i don't wanna it's like it's like a dentistry it's how it kind of feels like it's like just yeah yeah star trek people now are seething they're furious but yeah i i think i think that's a pretty uh sturdy little scroll six discussion because i can guarantee you guys like let let us know what you guys think or thoughts and stuff down below or any future elder scrolls six discussions you want to hear about because i'm sure there will be plenty more because there is a long ass time until we get to elder scrolls six so yeah yeah but we'll be back to some law related stuff next week and uh yeah that's about it we'll see you guys next time alright see you guys

Channel: FudgeMuppet

Views: 140,651

Keywords: skyrim, elder scrolls, elder scrolls lore, skyrim lore, elder scrolls podcast, fudgemuppet, elder scrolls lore podcast, elder scrolls 6

Id: G5HpUOUZrIk

Length: 79min 11sec (4751 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 03 2021