T w e n t y S i d e d

For those of you just tuning in: I wrote twenty posts of Elder Scrolls retrospective, then turned around and asked people to prompt even more of it. Some of these questions expand on points I’d brought up before; some ask me to predict where the franchise is going. There are plenty of both kinds. Expect these twice a week until we’re across the finish line.

Mr Guy asked:

If you were the design lead for the next game, what are the top 5 things you'd add, remove, or change?

My own biases are going to be kept at arm’s length from my answer. If Bethesda gave me the role of lead designer I’d aim for their identified market and respect their core methods–I’d settle for pruning away outright dysfunctional elements while leaving controversial evolutions, like unkillable NPCs, intact.

My list would run down like this:

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “The Altered Scrolls: Q&A, Part I”

Rutskarn is a writer, author, wordsmith, text producer, article deviser, prose architect, and accredited language-talker. If you enjoy his contributions to this site you could always back his Patreon.

This series could go on forever if it was nothing but gripes and praises.

Whatever else I have to say about the Elder Scrolls series, they are more multifaceted than nearly any release on the market. There are so many features, changes, retcons, experiments, reversions, and outright glitches that assuming I cut this series off before the next presidential election I am guaranteed to leave out that one part you were looking forward to. As it is, I’m sensing the graceful opportunity to conclude is coming up soon.

That’s why I’m taking a moment to talk over a few final Skyrim and Bethesda thoughts before I turn the next few entries over to review and Q&A. After that I’ll offer a few hot (or freezing cold, musty, and ageworn) takes on the games that exist at the outskirts of the franchise: outliers like Redguard, Battlespire, and TES Online, works that bear the branding if nothing else. The three have much in common: they’re technically canonical, they have novel mechanics, and nobody plays them.

So what remains to talk about now?

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “The Altered Scrolls, Part 20: Miscellaneous, Q&A”

Rutskarn is a writer, author, wordsmith, text producer, article deviser, prose architect, and accredited language-talker. If you enjoy his contributions to this site you could always back his Patreon.