Todd Howard confirmed in an interview this week that The Elder Scrolls 6 would make significant use of procedural generation to create its game world. This technique has been used in Elder Scrolls games 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 the Elder Scrolls modding community. Skyrim modders help keep the game’s sales high 9 years after its original release, and encouraging modding will be key to the success of The 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.
Survival
Procedural generation doesn't mean that the world of The Elder Scrolls 6 will be randomly generated. Procedural generation is 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 that The Elder Scrolls 6 will have a huge game world.
If The Elder Scrolls 6 has a large game world this will likely be great news for survival mods. Mods like Frostfall were already among the most popular for Skyrim, 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 make Skyrim’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 like The Elder Scrolls 6 will attempt to make cities feel more realistically sized than previous installments. In Skyrim, city populations could 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 to Skyrim’s towns to make them feel more alive, but the expansion of cities in The Elder Scrolls 6 will come as a welcome change for many Elder Scrolls fans.
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 of Skyrim’s map meant 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 this The Elder Scrolls 6 could achieve some of the same longevity Skyrim has enjoyed.
Modding Accessibility
It has been confirmed that The Elder Scrolls 6 will support modding, and that Bethesda is making a significant upgrade to The Creation Engine which will affect the upcoming title. If The Elder Scrolls 6 comes with a Creation Kit which makes modding as accessible as it was in Skyrim, 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 the Skyrim modding community, such as a mod that adds Bruma from Oblivion to Skyrim’s southern border. However, giving modders full access to procedural generation could see The Elder Scrolls 6’s modding community surpass Skyrim in 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 of The Elder Scrolls 6 ends up being. The game has been rumored to take place in parts of Hammerfell, High Rock, and possibly even the lost 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 6 will not just succeed based on its own merits, but on how much its engine and Creation Kit accommodate the modding community. Bethesda has not totally written off the possibility that The Elder Scrolls 6 will 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 Scrolls fans will have to wait for information about the size of the world in The Elder Scrolls 6 before 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 of The Elder Scrolls games and those who will seek to modify the new game the moment it releases.
The Elder Scrolls 6 is in development.