The Elder Scrolls 6 has a huge legacy to live up to, and stepping out of Skyrim’s shadow will be an enormous task for Bethesda. Fallout 4 demonstrated just how difficult this would be, receiving less critical acclaim than the last Elder Scrolls game despite attempting to expand upon its formula with a voiced player character and a more focused story.
While there are plenty of lessons to be taken away from Fallout 4’s shortcomings, there are also a few to be taken away from the key areas in which its experimentation succeeded. If The Elder Scrolls 6 is going to live up to the hype, it will need to play its cards very carefully. Fallout 4 presents one such way that the next Elder Scrolls game can do just that.
Fallout 4's Followers
At the start of Skyrim, player companions are one of the most immersive aspects of the game. If players help Sven or Faendal in Riverwood, they can accompany the player up to Bleak Falls Barrow or on any number of the Skyrim side quests they might go on. However, while the companions are often made available as followers by completing their quests, after they have joined the Dragonborn, they essentially fall back into defaults based on their voice actor and have no further implications for the story.
What Fallout 4 did very well was introducing characters as followers and continuing to develop them as the player progressed in their relationship. A great example is Nick Valentine, the synth detective who the Sole Survivor helps learn about his past, tracking down the vault of the gangster who was responsible for the death of his human body.
The mistake Fallout 4 makes is attempting to add too much depth to its player protagonist. The Fallout 4 player is always a military veteran, always in a heterosexual relationship, always has a child, and always speaks in a standard American middle-class accent. This makes the opportunities for immersing the player in the character extremely limited for anyone who wasn’t already planning to play into such an archetype.
Creating Compelling Companions
The same does not apply, however, to companions. Increasing the specificity of companion characters’ personalities and giving them developing arcs only gives the player more opportunities to roleplay as that relationship develops. This can be integrated into the world in a way that doesn’t even require the developer to write an immense amount of additional quests if done properly. Lets say, for example, that when arriving in Riverwood the player is able to convince Sven to join them on the quest to Bleak Falls Barrow by telling him that it would make a good song for the bard on his return.
Then, after returning to Riverwood, the love triangle quest is activated by the fact that Sven leaving town to adventure with the player gave Faendal an opportunity to romance Camilla Valerius. As such, Sven’s request to pass Camilla a forged letter from Faendal takes on a whole new meaning in the context of te player's relationship, which is already more developed at this point.
This design would also make the quest feel like a result of the player's actions. Now, instead of simply choosing which lover to side with as in the original game, the player is made to choose between their own loyalties and their sense of morality, simply by reorganizing the quest rather than rewriting the premise or adding far more content to Skyrim.
The Elder Scrolls 6 is only going to step out of Skyrim’s shadow if it gives players some seriously memorable characters and roleplaying opportunities. Fallout 4, for all its flaws and plot-holes, showed how that was possible with companions in an open-world game. While there’s much from the last Fallout to leave behind, it’s one lesson The Elder Scrolls 6 needs to learn if it’s going to eclipse the previous game and make as big a splash as Skyrim did almost ten years ago.
The Elder Scrolls 6Â is in development.