Elder Scrolls 6 should focus on moral choices rather than stats, says RPG veteran
Oblivion Remastered is stirring up discussion about the future of The Elder Scrolls series. Bruce Nesmith, a former gameplay designer at Bethesda, said in an interview with VideoGamer that TES 6 should prioritize player choices.
The Elder Scrolls 6, compared to, for example, Skyrim. After all, this type of approach to RPGs evidently "sells well." Bruce Nesmith, former gameplay designer at Bethesda, suggests, however, that the studio will most likely go in the opposite direction.
In a conversation with VideoGamer, Nesmith itted that although there is a community demanding a return to "traditional RPGs," in his opinion, most players "just want to play fun games." As he claims:
There is a little bit of a movement to look back nostalgically at games that are more traditional RPGs. But I personally think that’s a much smaller core audience than the audience of people who just want to play fun games. [Players] just want to get out there, the want to have fun. They don't want to be drowned in stats and all this other stuff.
It's about choice / choices
According to the developer, the design philosophy behind Skyrim may also dominate in TES 6. In his opinion, this is what the modern approach to RPGs is all about. Nesmith worked on the classic Oblivion as the lead gameplay designer. Even though he's no longer with Bethesda, he still speaks as a veteran in the industry.
[…] that’s a very modern take on RPGs. And that is actually at the heart of the ‘you do it to get better at it’ [levelling mechanic] philosophy of The Elder Scrolls. Because that means I'm not having to pick my skills, I just play. Don't worry about all that crap if you don't want to. If you want to, go ahead, but if you don't want to, you don't have to.
In Nesmith's opinion, the ability to make big decisions should be a pillar of the new installment of the series. Referring to Fallout 3, he cited the example of the moral choice system:
I think the players appreciate having real choices in the game [...]. The decision-making in Fallout 3 that you could make in of how your character responded with karma and being able to finish quests in different ways compared to Fallout 4 [where] there’s really only one way to succeed, there was only one moral choice except for the grand main quest, players like that.
What's interesting, according to Nesmith, the huge success of Baldur’s Gate 3, which is much more complex than Oblivion, shows that there is a demand from players for more complicated games. However, it depends on Bethesda whether they will want to revise their approach and move away from the philosophy that their former employee introduced.
Unfortunately, for now, after years since the announcement, we don't even know the subtitle of The Elder Scrolls 6. Nonetheless, according to Todd Howard, the game is being intensively developed.
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