The Elder Scrolls 6: 9 Things It Must Do Better Than Skyrim

Almost seven long, torturous years have slipped by since the blight of Alduin and his crusade against the Dovahkiin was brought to a halt. The frigid winds billowing across Skyrim have settled, the dragons have had their fun, and arrows have ceased ending the careers of aspiring adventurers.

It's time for a new chapter to begin.

But what's to be expected of the next epic fantasy tale due to unfold in Nirn? Are we to assume iteration - rather than innovation - will be the order of the day, or is The Elder Scrolls VI to be the turning point; a blank slate facilitated by new hardware to replace the ageing Creation Engine?

With any luck, the latter's exactly what's in store. Skyrim was genre-defining for its time, but the world has moved on since 2011. Looking back now, much of its systems look and feel antiquated by comparison to modern-day RPGs. Combat feels sluggish and simplistic, NPCs roll off of a mass produced assembly line and the world, full of dungeons to uncover and winged reptiles to slay, somehow feels ever so empty.

These hangovers from yesteryear must be modernized if ESO VI is to ever truly justify its long gestation period, and we can only hope that Bethesda has spent the better part of a decade making sure Skyrim looks like an ancient relic by comparison.

The meme-spawning NPCs of Nirn's Northernmost province have become the stuff of legend since Skyrim's launch in 2011. From The Reach to Winterhold, there's no mountain you can climb or river you can cross where you won't hear about the nation's love of mead or the epidemic of retired adventurers all forced into taking up guard duty after a nasty career-ending accident.

Comedic, albeit unintentionally so, it may be, that Skyrim's population of generic NPCs exhaust their small pool of dialogue choices within hours of play, but we've had our fun with it. Bethesda needs to step up its game if Skyrim's successor is to avoid the immersion-breaking problem of characters parroting the same voice lines over and over.

Nobody expects every non-unique NPC to have individually-written lines, but there's an easy way to lessen the frequency in which the same stock responses reach the player's ears. By all means, up the quantity of dialogue, but go one further and restrict certain phrases from being uttered depending on geographical location.

That way, you won't have to hear about arrow-stricken knees from one end of the country to the other.