Todd Howard confirmed in an interview this week thatThe Elder Scrolls 6would make significant use of procedural generation to create its game world. This technique has been used inElder Scrollsgames in the past, however, a renewed focus on procedural generation and Howard’s claims that towns and cities will be significantly larger in future Bethesda games suggests the game’s world will be quite large.
A larger game world is fantastic news for theElder Scrollsmodding community.Skyrimmodders help keep the game’s sales high 9 years after its original release, and encouraging modding will be key to the success ofThe Elder Scrolls 6. A large, procedurally generated world provides some key opportunities for some of the most popular kinds of mods to expand their ambition for the next generation.
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Survival
Procedural generation doesn’t mean that the world ofThe Elder Scrolls 6will be randomly generated.Procedural generationis a tool used to generate large land-masses so that they don’t have to be created by hand in the game’s engine. It’s for this reason that the focus on procedural generation implies thatThe Elder Scrolls 6will have a huge game world.
IfThe Elder Scrolls 6has a large game world this will likely be great news for survival mods.Mods like Frostfallwere already among the most popular forSkyrim, adding in weather effects which players had to account for, as well as shelter, tents, and clothing warmth. A large game world created with the help of procedural generation could lead to survival mods becoming even more popular, with players incentivized to spend much of their game-time exploring the wilderness while also wanting to be challenged by that wilderness itself.
The risk with a large game-world will always be that it doesn’t feel sufficiently dense and that travel time becomes a boring slog rather than a part of the adventure. Camping mods,weather mods, and other mods that make that large world feel more alive and intimidating already help makeSkyrim’s well-explored landscape seem enormous again, and survival mods could be key to helping a larger world feel as exciting as it is huge.
Towns and Cities
Todd Howard has already commented that future Bethesda titles likeThe Elder Scrolls 6will attempt to make cities feel more realistically sized than previous installments. InSkyrim, city populationscould be as few as 20 NPCs, which could break player immersion, especially when settlements were established as far larger in the lore or NPC dialog hinted at a far larger city in the story. Some mods have done great work to add a level of density toSkyrim’s towns to make them feel more alive, but the expansion of cities inThe Elder Scrolls 6will come as a welcome change for manyElder Scrollsfans.
Not only with larger cities allow for city customization mods to have an even greater impact on the game, but larger areas between cities could allow for modders to create entirely new towns and villages which fit seamlessly into the game world. The size ofSkyrim’s mapmeant that adding additional cities was almost impossible without revealing the relatively small size of the different holds. Adding another city to Whiterun hold without Whiterun itself also being visible, for example, would pose a challenge.
A large game world could allow players to add new towns and cities with entirely self-contained stories into the game. The potential for player-made questing a huge open-world is immense, and through thisThe Elder Scrolls 6could achieve some of the samelongevitySkyrimhas enjoyed.
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Modding Accessibility
It has been confirmed thatThe Elder Scrolls 6will support modding, and that Bethesda is making a significant upgrade toThe Creation Enginewhich will affect the upcoming title. IfThe Elder Scrolls 6comes with a Creation Kit which makes modding as accessible as it was inSkyrim, procedural generation could have a huge role to play.
If modders are given access to the same procedural generation tools as the developers at Bethesda, players could see mods more easily add entirely new areas to the game, such as bordering regions or new game worlds entirely. Similar things have been attempted in theSkyrimmodding community, such as a mod that adds Bruma fromOblivionto Skyrim’s southern border. However, giving modders full access to procedural generation could seeThe Elder Scrolls 6’s modding community surpassSkyrimin terms of the scale of the mods that smaller teams are able to make.
Ultimately, this will all depend on just how big the world ofThe Elder Scrolls 6ends up being. The game has been rumored to take place in parts of Hammerfell, High Rock, and possibly even thelost continent of Yokuda. This could mean that the world will not be entirely open and will have loading screens between the two continents. Yokuda could also be a great location for modding, with players potentially able to generate their own islands to add to the lost landmass.
The Elder Scrolls 6will not just succeed based on its own merits, but on how much its engine andCreation Kitaccommodate the modding community. Bethesda has not totally written off the possibility thatThe Elder Scrolls 6will be a timed Xbox exclusive due to the acquisition of Zenimax by Microsoft. Console exclusivity, even temporary exclusivity, could be to the huge detriment of the modding community.
Elder Scrollsfans will have to wait for information about thesize of the world inThe Elder Scrolls6before the game’s true potential becomes apparent. For now, however, the news that the game world will be large enough to require significant procedural generation is good news for fans ofThe Elder Scrollsgames and those who will seek to modify the new game the moment it releases.
The Elder Scrolls 6is in development.
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