Why Elder Scrolls 6 SHOULD NOT be Like Skyrim

[Music] what's going on ladies and gentlemen my name is michael and welcome to fudge muppet if you've been following our elder scrolls 6 discussions on the channel you may have heard me say that i just want elder scroll 6 to be like skyrim but obviously set somewhere else and with more to do a new bigger and better experience similar to the game we all love so much but this mentality tends to come from a place of concern that bethesda might do what they did with fallout to the elder scrolls and shake things up too much by severely limiting role-playing potential with a voice protagonist or by implementing settlements for us to build all over the map in place of unique set locations with new characters to meet and quests to do what i should really be saying is that i want elder scrolls 6 to be more like oblivion but bigger and better or any elder scrolls title before that really because what i do not want is for elder scroll 6 to be an inconsistently applied power fantasy that instantly hands you high status on a silver platter and that is the concept we're going to be exploring today you may have heard us bring up this concept a bit in other videos as it tends to pop up here and there in different topics maybe i'm talking about a certain guild storyline and comparing it to previous titles or perhaps we're having a discussion about daedric princes in elder scrolls vi well today i want to talk about skyrim to bring all of the main examples into the spotlight and then kind of tie it all together into one cohesive piece where it will be obvious why i want the autoscroll 6 to be a little bit more like previous elder scrolls titles and remember no matter what i say don't forget we absolutely love skyrim here at fudge muppet and for me personally skyrim constantly shifts rankings in my top 3 favorite games ever i still want to retain the sensational aspects that skyrim did right but i also want what's best for the elder scrolls series and i hope that the next elder scrolls game we play is the best one so far but now it's time to read out the crimes skyrim has committed against the elder scrolls and her people and keep in mind there's no way i have time to go super deep into the flaws of every quest or plot we cover today but i will link any videos in the description that explore the various topics i bring up in this video as you'd remember no matter what race you are or what life you wish to live short of just ignoring the main story which you can do but it feels unnatural given the urgency of seeing outdoor and attack elgin a dragon and missing out on the dragonborn dlc entirely skyrim makes you the prophesized dragonborn you have more or less come to save the world from alduin and are gifted with the ability to devour dragon souls a power that no one else seems to have allowing you to truly kill a dragon and stop them from rising again your dragonborn status allows you to easily learn dragon shouts a power that others must dedicate their entire lives to in order to attain the same level of proficiency again unless you flat out ignore the main story which is unlikely given the way it all unfolds in skyrim you retrieve the dragonstone for whiterun's court wizard and before you know it you're being sent to the nearby watchtower to fight a dragon who could forget their first encounter with one of these mythical and powerful creatures i remember feeling quite intimidated and at my low level at the time i also remember that the white run guards did a lot of the damage for me after this big team effort i started absorbing its soul suddenly i was being revered as this dragonborn someone able to slay dragons and absorb their essence the guards were in awe of me and the greybeard's voice boomed out from hyfrothgar beckoning me to go visit them and so you venture up the 7 000 steps and learn from these old wise monks and understand how to use the voice in previous elder scrolls games you had to spend a long time developing your magical abilities to do anything cool but in skyrim it wasn't long before you could breathe fire from your mouth and turn your foes to a crisp now i'd be lying if i said this wasn't an awesome and fun experience it was but i still don't believe it was the most optimal choice for an elder scrolls game in skyrim you start as a nobody for about 30 minutes to an hour and then the game starts treating you as a kind of god you're sent to study with the most honored ancient group of masters of the voice before meeting up with remnants of the blades and proving very fast just how much of a professional dragon slayer you are you walk into a tavern and there are bad singing about you the dragonborn hero and you kind of know in your head that you're probably going to save the world and even defeat alduin well before you finally do there's just not really a lot of doubt created in your mind this is in spite of the fact that if you try to tackle a giant early on you'll be rocketed out of mundus faster than a sunbird of eleanor i mean you probably barely survived the frost troll on the way to hyphrothgar without some heavy assistance from lydia lydia being your companion who has sworn her life to protect you due to the fact that you were already made thane of all of whiterun hold due to the dragon you fought on balgruff's orders despite the fact that you may not have even done most of the damage i don't think anyone watching this video needs convincing that skyrim is a game that makes you the predestined savior of the world and we'll talk about the issues with that soon and the potential implications if something similar is done in elder scrolls 6 but first let's just look at how outside of the main story almost all of the factions in skyrim make you out to be some sort of chosen one as well so in skyrim there are four main factions you can join obviously not including the civil war that revolve around your playstyle so there's the college of winterhold the thieves guild the companions guild and the dark brotherhood every single one of these guilds makes you someone special straight away and just like the main story this high status is given to you or implied about you in spite of your actual performance and even completely disconnected from the dragonborn prophecy if you wanted a power fantasy that was at least consistently applied you'd be able to gloat about and show off your dragonborn powers all the time in the various storylines and not be called a whelp by the companions for example instead half the time you feel like you're the mighty dragonborn but then the other half you're not recognized for it at all this weird combination of getting too much respect and they're not being recognized at all is definitely something i don't want in elder scrolls 6. let's start with the companions guild you join the inner circle of the companions after doing just one main quest for the guild personally i feel like it's easy to forget that this was the case or not notice it let's break it down so maybe you met some companions members outside the city killing a giant and they were grumpy that you didn't help them despite it literally being their job that they've been sent to do and past spies shouldn't have anything to do with it either way they still encourage you to go talk to kodlak for whatever reason kodlak sizes you up as worthy but vilcas doesn't there's no option to say hey actually i'm the dragonborn sent to save the world or that you've actually killed erdogan if you had already you're a whelp and to join you'll begin by striking at vilcas in the yard to prove yourself after this you take his sword over to yorland the blacksmith who gives you a shield to take to ayla basically some miscellaneous tasks to meet more characters and take in the atmosphere farkas shows you to your quarters and you can then accept one of the many radiant quests on offer maybe you go and kill a spider who has taken up residence in someone's house all right well obscure now suddenly wants to see you because you're being sent on a super important mission with farkas to retrieve a fragment of wu thread you go there encounter the silver hand find out farkas is a werewolf get the fragment and return you then attend a kind of initiation ceremony in the yard before having to take on another one of the radiant quests and after doing this guess what skull wants to meet you in the under forge at night you go into the cavern beneath the skyforge and are introduced to ayla in her werewolf form discovering that the circle the most esteemed members of the companions guild are all werewolves and now you're invited to join in and be a part of it you also have no choice in the matter anyway after just one main quest you've become part of the circle and get all the power associated with being a werewolf like your dragonborn status it's given to you fast and you don't really feel like you earned it and it's not really recognized properly either other members of the guild who aren't in the circle continue to have a somewhat disrespectful attitude towards you in a similar way that being the prophesized dragonborn can hamper role-playing for a variety of characters such as those who actually want to play as some lowly non-respected traveller this also messes with role-playing in the sense that you must take on the identity of being a werewolf and you can't even say no to her scene having some kind of claim over your soul now let's move to the thieves guild how do power fantasy elements cause trouble here well again you are made the chosen one and again not because you are dragonborn so going to riften brinyoff approaches you with the idea of helping him to plant a stolen ring in the pocket of a shopkeeper to put the target out of business after brynjolf creates a distraction skyrim gives you talent you didn't earn by statistically giving you a boost of 30 to your pickpocket chance this is temporary and makes planting the ring more likely to be a success you lose the buff when the quest is done but even if you manage to fail in spite of the unwarranted assistance you can still progress onwards in fact you can even drop the ring and say you lost it and still proceed to the next quest perhaps you could try to justify this by saying well the thieves guild must be so run down and desperate that brinyoff decided to just let anyone in but this isn't necessarily true because once you arrive at the ragged flag and you overhear him talking about you saying i'm telling you this one is different so he scouts for talent you fail his test but he lets you in because you're special and he can just feel it understandably this cheapens the experience but it's hard to be surprised when this theme of just being handed recognition runs rampant throughout almost every area of the game in spite of whether or not you earned it you're then sent on that thuggish debt collection quest where you can go against his orders and actually full on kill all of the targets and stay in the guild and progress onwards you can fail everything have extremely low skill levels in all thief areas and he even says despite your mistakes i see more potential in you than half the snot-nosed foot pads that stumble their way into the flagon it's just silly again being dragonborn isn't recognized in the guild either i'm not saying that would be a great thing because i like having separate guild experiences where you can go and just feel like an aspiring thief or a studious mage but this is the problem with making you the predestined dragonborn in the first place it leads to inconsistently applied power fantasy elements with areas that are super fun and enjoyable but also times when a your status doesn't feel earned and or b your status is not recognized at all and you're viewed in the same way you probably look at the pesky courier who's got another note to deliver believe it or not this theme continues on in the dark brotherhood storyline besides fulfilling the process of joining where you help juventus kill grelod and then you wake up in the shack with astrid telling you that you need to kill one of three captives you only need to do one main mission before you find out that you're the listener so you go to the full create sanctuary get your armor and nazi gives you some pretty mundane contracts you only need to do one then return to find cicero has arrived before you're given the main quest for muri you go to macarth and she basically just sends you into a dwemer ruin that hardly requires stealthy assassination tactics at all to kill a man who betrayed her she also asks if you'll kill nelson shattershield of windhelm but that's optional once you come back astrid asks you to spy on cicero to see who he is whispering to when he locks himself in the chamber where the night mother's coffin is you hide in the coffin find out cicero has been trying to talk to the night mother and then the night mother actually speaks to you which means that you're the listener the highest rank in the entire guild it is an incredibly revered position to be in but of course with the lack of traditionalism and skyrim skilled astrid won't be recognizing it so it's not the same as literally being given the superpowers straight away but it's just another example of how you're just gifted these titles and positions of status without having earned them whatever you do you know that you're different and someone special from the beginning would you believe the same issues come up in the college of winterhold well as the skyrim guild that gets the most critique from elder scrolls fans perhaps you would when arriving at the college of winterhold you must prove yourself to get in but if you're forced to go there in your main story search for an elder scroll you can use your dragonborn status to get in options like this would be perfect if bethesda had implemented them more consistently and actually gave them impact but it's not overly helpful in this case as the college doesn't treat you any differently you'd think they'd be desperate to research your power or something like that anyway there's plenty of things that don't make sense in the college story such as sending a novice into a dragga-filled crypt and for more analysis on that you can click the link to the video about it in the description but in this video the main thing to point out is the sigic order members of the sigic order appear to you throughout the storyline literally telling you how you're going to win yet again you are quickly informed that you are some kind of chosen one predestined to succeed first that's saffall you're told know that you have set in motion a chain of events that cannot be stopped you mage and you alone have the potential to prevent disaster take care and know that the order is watching you'd think that the sigic order could help a bit more considering they have the best mages in tamriel though they say that the future is as obscured to them as it is to you but also at the end of the plot that a great many things obscured to you are quite clear to us during the plot they tell you it is within you to succeed never forget that and even later on rise to the challenge and discover what you are capable of you are on the right path and you will prevail you can't get more clear than that they're saying you just flat out won't lose after you do win you'll be told we knew you would succeed your victory here justifies our belief in you and also we have long believed you would prevail again this is giving the player a high status from the very early stages of the plot not necessarily among the other college members but the fact that the most elusive and powerful faction of mages to ever exist in the elder scrolls universe are giving you a personal audience to tell you that you alone have the potential to save everyone from disaster and then that you will succeed tells the player well in advance that they're special and unique you could be a terrible mage but you're just showered in this instant gratification which you can see is a consistent issue in skyrim but now that we've gone through some primary examples of issues in skyrim let's talk about how this could be problematic for elder scrolls vi and some considerations i think bethesda should keep in mind so if elder scroll 6 is set in hammerfell which most people believe to be the case at the moment then it's very easy for them to make us the prophesized sword singer if you've seen our ideal elder scroll 6 hammerfell video where we go through how we'd make the game then you'd know that we purposefully wouldn't do this but one can only imagine that bethesda might just take the low-hanging fruit and give players a host of sword-singing powers that can quickly start unlocking through finding ancient memory stones it would act as a simple method of replacing word walls and dragon shouts with a hammerfell themed equivalent a swordsinger power fantasy would probably be really fun but just because it's fun doesn't mean it's the best fit for a franchise that has built itself on a be anyone do anything role-playing premise shawn skyrim could feel a bit out of place to be largely forced to be a super powerful fusro daring dragonborn when you just planned to be a charming rogue who keeps to himself but at least it didn't change your play style in the most general sense but a swordsier character could too heavily reward a warrior playstyle you want to be an elderly dark elf pure mage who has been practicing conjuration magic for 200 years prior to the events of elder scrolls vi well guess what you're actually a prophesized sword singer here to save everyone sword singing is very warrior skill oriented and is meant to be something only for a special few would warriors get an unfair advantage if every character is a sword singer it would also feel boring to use any other melee weapon like a war axe instead of a spirit sword or if the power was more general would you just collect sword singer powers that do weird things that don't fit the vibe of how sword singing has been talked about so far like summon fire sword make it rain lightning swords or do a giant spinning sword whirlwind attack to unleash a cyclone and so on it might sound fun but i just think it would feel cheap and ruin the vibe of a lot of builds anyway this is all just speculation and isn't necessarily what bethesda will implement but you can see the pitfalls with going down this instant gratification power fantasy route it can also lead to the elder scroll 6 having recognition problems all over the place we already talked about how in skyrim there's this issue where not only does the world go by sure you're the dragonborn but it also doesn't acknowledge you for it in obvious areas where you should be like guild story lines nor provide you with the option to say that you're the dragonborn like you kill alduin and then you're just no one to some people and if you wanted a consistently applied experience if someone doesn't know you're the dragonborn you should be able to tell them i don't want elder scrolls 6 to have this problem where you're given some kind of power trip fantasy but then your status is taken away in every side quest imagine a setup where you're some gifted sword singer there to save the world in the main but then in the side quests there's no options where you can demand respect for your swordsinger abilities it feels weird when people can suddenly treat you like a lackey who should feel blessed to be paid 50 septums to recover their iron sword when you are someone who is greatly revered in their culture it just leads to a less cohesive experience that doesn't match up like a jigsaw puzzle where the final pieces don't actually fit but here's the thing i think we all still want these kinds of quests to exist where you are seen as a nobody by the quest giver which is exactly why i think strong power fantasy elements being thrust on the player in the sense of being a pre-destined hero with powers are a bad idea just like in every elder scrolls game so far including skyrim players should have a huge variety of quests that don't all shower them in respect there should also be a large variety of dialogue options to reflect exactly who you want to be and for a lot of us that's not always a loud and proud famous messiah warrior if i go into a tavern in hammerfell and someone is singing about sword singers and i am one by default in the main story i'm going to feel a bit disappointed we should have more of a subtle playthrough if we want to i don't mind if you can become a sword singer and learn one or two special powers by doing a series of well-earned special side quests for a certain faction but that's a completely different angle if you were some kind of special character like a sword singer from the beginning and then the guilds you join treat you like an absolute nobody to begin with but then suddenly foreshadow you as or just make you one of their elite it's going to feel silly especially if it works out again to be a setup where you're special regardless of your actual proficiency in a set of guild related skills or performance on quests you're given if you've been watching fudge muppet for a while then you'd know we're massive fans of making builds and one of the reasons is that character development is one of the coolest things about good rpgs it's so much fun to make up a backstory for your character and think about how they could progress during a playthrough in the game well being a godly character from the start at least lore wise hampers this as does being made to feel special quickly on in a guild imagine joining a warriors guild in hammerfell doing a radiant quest for them then a main quest and then you're invited to join their inner circle of sword singer revivalists assuming you're not one already in the main story it just doesn't feel earned and you can see why i wouldn't want elder scrolls 6 to be like skyrim in this regard that said i'm all for being recognized for a master if you are one so if you have 100 in the one-handed skill and then join a warrior-based guild i think you should be treated better than if you are an absolute noob what i would prefer in the elder scroll 6 is for things to be like previous elder scrolls games where you were not necessarily destined to save the world and given super powers straight away and before you say in morrowind you were the nerevarine and in oblivion the emperor saw you in his dreams and so on these games definitely didn't make you feel like you were someone special people constantly doubted that you were the nerevarine in morrowind and no special powers like the thumb come with it anyway so you could definitely feel like a nobody if you wanted to you had to earn all the respect you got and by the end of it some fans still speculate about and doubt whether they really are the nerevarine in oblivion you are also no one special you became the champion of cyrodiil but you helped martin to defeat dagon and the mythic dawn it was martin who felt like the special one needed to save the world and you had to rescue him and help him do so also again you had no unique powers like dragon shouts we saw similar setups in auto scores 1 and 2 where players really felt like they had to earn their stripes so does this mean i don't want any power fantasy elements in the elder scrolls 6 of course not here's the thing in previous elder scrolls games you could still get a big power fantasy experience if you wanted to but you had to earn it and it wasn't given to you in the form of inherent and unique super powerful abilities i'm not sure why but i could argue that sometimes i felt more powerful in an oblivion playthrough using my character with custom spells and all of this other crazy stuff i worked extremely hard to get than i did as the dragonborn now obviously this isn't the case in the law as the dragonborn is meant to be super powerful but using a spell that almost instantly killed anyone it was aimed at with branches of lightning that shot out across the length of entire rooms and sent everyone it touched flying into the walls floor or roof was incredibly satisfying of course i could only unlock this by first maxing out my magic skills and of course doing all of the mages guild recommendation quests to even be able to access the arcane university where i could unlock spell making and in addition i had to save up huge amounts of money to actually pay for the spell creation particularly due to the godlike effects i was aiming for adding cool new possibilities can lead players to feeling incredibly powerful without making it inherent to who they are no matter their choice for example learning how to levitate around the map in morrowind is extremely cool but you have to figure that out for yourself so the point of this video is not to say i don't want anyone to have god tier powers in the elder scroll vi i still want to be able to feel like a superhero but i want to earn it and i think it works best when you have to grind to achieve great powers if you want them which can then be used in gameplay and don't necessarily need to be written into the default lore of who your character is in this way each playthrough can feel distinctly unique in terms of what character you're playing and what amazing powers they possess because it's simply based on what they earn in skyrim you can be a master thief an archer with pinpoint accuracy an unkillable warrior or a puppet master mage and this is great you should be able to explore many powerful avenues but let's take all of the different play style possibilities and enhance those with new spells new perks and new mechanics and so on so that there's actually more variation in character builds and role-playing potential without needing to give every character a set superpower that defines them as a legend but then feels weird in the times where it's straight up not acknowledged i think a good way to frame things is that no matter how much power you earn and you should be able to attain a lot if you try hard the world should always feel bigger than you vs revolve around you now i'm not saying everything in skyrim revolves around the dragonborn but a whole lot is related to it versus previous elder scrolls games where you feel more like a stranger who rose to the challenge unsure if they really were the hero everyone needed to save the day for recognition it also helps to have an improved disposition system so that people in the world will treat you differently based on what they know about you and it should feel realistic too so that guards don't know you're the listener of the dark brotherhood or just size you up as being a conjuration master for no reason in fact if things are done more like the elder scrolls titles before skyrim then most npcs won't really know who you are at all only some people would particularly important people who have enlisted your help in conclusion i don't want elder scrolls 6 to be like skyrim in the sense of it feeling like an inconsistently applied power fantasy headed to you on a plate versus you earning it in a number of different ways i would prefer less hand holding and less instant gratification but also even more potential for doing incredibly skillful or high power level type stuff that you have to grind to get by fleshing out the skills perks magic and other character build areas of the game i would love to hear what you think of this in the comment section below and if you want to reach out to myself scott or drew our twitter links can be found in the description thank you so much for watching the video it's always nice to be able to talk about something i'm so passionate about and to create a discussion around the future direction of the older scrolls games please like the video if you think it deserves it my name is michael and i look forward to noting out with you again very soon

Channel: FudgeMuppet

Views: 168,287

Rating: 4.9218302 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: wknkez6W8TE

Length: 24min 52sec (1492 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 05 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/CautionarySparkle]

if i wanted to not have fun. I’d play dark souls.

[u/terrymcginnisbeyond]

All together now, what 👏🏼 game 👏🏼 should 👏🏼 it 👏🏼 be 👏🏼like 👏🏼 Fudgemuppet.

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There's a channel that's starting to go on repeat.

[u/Down2WUB]

You’ve always been the chosen one and I’m totally fine with it