Todd Howard confirmed in an interview at Brighton Digital on November 2 thatThe Elder Scrolls 6’s map will be designed using procedural generation. The announcement has left some fans confused, withThe Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfallalso having used generated landscapes to create a map as large as Great Britain. However, the map of the upcomingElder Scrollsgame will not be randomly generated. Instead, procedural generation is one useful way to manage create huge areas of land in a game world, which will still be consistent across different playthroughs.
This has some huge implications forThe Elder Scrolls 6. First, it implies that fans can expect a map far bigger thanSkyrim’s. Not only that, but it has some big implications for how the rest of the game will need to be designed in order to bring that larger world to life.
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The Elder Scrolls 6’s Map Size
Whilemap ofSkyrimis large as video games go, its dimensions are actually relatively small. Skyrim as a province covers only about 14 square miles in total. Instead of creating a huge game world to match the supposed size of Skyrim in the lore, Bethesda used a few tricks to makeSkyrimfeel far bigger using a smaller landscape.
First, paths tended to be winding to make journeys feels longer than they were. Second, large mountain rangers and differences in elevation were used between different areas of the map to make sure that players couldn’t too easily see all of it at once. Third, the rendering distance was limited when the game originally released in 2011, though it is now possible to see much ofSkyrim’s map from high points likethe Throat of the Worldon most PC set ups.
The news thatThe Elder Scrolls 6’s map will be created using procedural generation comes in tandem with another major change being made. The engine used forSkyrimand many other Bethesda games,the Creation Enginebased on the older Gambryo engine, will finally be overhauled.
These two bits of news together imply that the map ofThe Elder Scrolls 6could be significantly larger thanSkyrim’s. The series has also used procedural generation in the past, for example inOblivion’s Cyrodiilto create the countryside. However, the increased focus on it implies that the new game’s map is large enough that designing all of the land by hand would pose significant challenges despite the fact thatThe Elder Scrolls 6will likely not release for several years and has a huge team working on it.
Howard also commented that cities would be significantly larger in upcoming Bethesda projects than they had been in previous games, with someSkyrimcity populationsnumbering as low as 20 and towns like Riverwood with 200 houses in Arena rendered as small hamlets.
This will be very exciting news for manyElder Scrollsfans, and could be exactly the kind of decision to helpThe Elder Scrolls 6live up toSkyrimand surpass its immense legacy. However, ifThe Elder Scrolls 6is going to have a far larger game world than its predecessor, Bethesda will need to overcome some major challenges and avoid some temptations in order to verify the game world feels as alive.
The Challenges of a Larger World
First, Bethesda will need to ensure that there are significant incentives and dynamic challenges to exploring this game world. Weather systems and basic survival mechanics are one way to do so, as in the popularSkyrimmod Frostfall, which made the world feel more dynamic by disincentivizing players from staying in the cold or rain for too long inSkyrim’s frozen landscape.
As well as major cities,The Elder Scrolls 6will need to verify its larger world is also populated by settlements with as much character. It’s one thing for landscapes to feel generated, but quite another if NPCs feel generated as well. Howard also commented in the interview that the engine upgrade will be used to develop more complex AI, but Bethesda should make sure that the world doesn’t feel like it’s running on auto-pilot. Different towns should have unique problems, unique characters, architectural influences, and different political powers at play from the Empire to theAldmeri Dominion. In order to makeThe Elder Scrolls 6trulySkyrim’s successor, it will need to expand upon both its breadth and its depth.
Another way Bethesda could make the world feel more dynamic is by having characters naturally travel between settlements for work and trade. A larger world could mean thatThe Elder Scrolls 6has to adopt a longerday-night cyclein order to match the expected travel time between locations. The extent of this change will entirely depend on just how much bigger the next game’s map will be.
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Starfield and TES’s Future
Starfieldwill also be using procedural generation, likely to help make some of the worlds that players will be able to visit in the space-set sci-fi game. This is good news for The Elder Scrolls 6. It gives Bethesda an opportunity to experiment with breathing life into procedurally generated landscapes and working to take what was made by computers and give it a necessary human touch.
The success and failures ofStarfield, which is set to release beforeThe Elder Scrolls 6, is a great opportunity to explore the challenges of a new engine and system of game design with a lower-stakes IP.Starfieldis Bethesda’s first new IP outing in over 25 years, and the experimentation that may allow could be great news forThe Elder Scrolls 6if its successes are carried over.
Size isn’t everything, and in many ways, creating a far larger map presents as much of a challenge as it does an exciting opportunity. What the announcement of the use of procedural generation does mean, however, is that fans can likely expect quite a different game world than the one theyexplored inSkyrimback in 2011. Whether the changes will be enough to helpThe Elder Scrolls 6forge its own legacy remains to be seen.
The Elder Scrolls 6is in development.
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