It has been a long time since The Elder Scrolls 6 was announced at E3 2018, and fans of the franchise have been waiting for details about the upcoming game's setting and story for years to no avail. After the events of Skyrim there are some huge questions about how the franchise will move forward.
The Elder Scrolls 6 faces some huge storytelling challenges. Picking a side in Skyrim's Civil War was one of the key decisions players made in the last Elder Scrolls game, and it remains unclear how The Elder Scrolls 6 will deal with the radically different implications the outcome of that war could have for the future of Tamriel. Here's why Skyrim's Civil War makes The Elder Scrolls 6's tall order even more challenging, and some of the ways Bethesda may attempt to tackle the problem.
The Civil War Challenge
Dealing with the consequences of Skyrim's Civil War presents a big problem for The Elder Scrolls 6. No matter where in Tamriel the next game is set, it would seem absurd for the impact of Skyrim's Civil War on the overall balance of power on the continent not to be felt. If the Stormcloaks won, for example, the Empire would have lost another province and would likely be unable to survive the growing power of the Aldmeri Dominion for much longer. If Skyrim remained part of the Empire, it could remain strong enough to survive for some time.
Most Elder Scrolls games are able to avoid mentioning the decisions presented to players in previous games. Whether or not Oblivion's Hero of Kvatch ever completed the Dark Brotherhood or Thieves Guild questlines, for example, makes sense as something that might be left out of most history books. The fate of an entire province, however, would be far more difficult to simply avoid bringing up in the next game. It would be especially jarring if the Nords of The Elder Scrolls 6 seemed unaware of whether or not their homeland was a part of the Empire. There are several different ways Bethesda could approach this challenge.
Time And Setting
There are a few ways that The Elder Scrolls 6 could get around the problem presented by Skyrim's Civil War. It is possible that The Elder Scrolls 6 will not be set in Tamriel at all, which would allow the storytellers to get away with avoiding the question far more easily. The next game could be set somewhere on one of the many unvisited continents of Nirn, such as Akavir or the lost continent of Yokuda.
There's another way Bethesda could overcome the problem without directly stating who won the war. Skyrim took place 200 years after Oblivion, the biggest time jump between main games in the franchise seen so far. This allowed for events like the war between the Dominion and the Empire, the Argonian invasion of Morrowind, and the destruction of Vvardenfell to all happen between games.
If The Elder Scrolls 6 was set several centuries after Skyrim, it is possible that the Empire could have dissolved under Dominion pressure regardless of the Civil War's outcome. Ulfric Stormcloak might be considered a hero of an independent Skyrim regardless of whether or not his rebellion succeeded at the time, and the timeline in which the Empire defeated the Stormcloaks could still see Skyrim an independent country by the time The Elder Scrolls 6 is set.
In fact, it's hard to imagine the Empire of Tamriel surviving long after the events of Skyrim anyway. Between the war with the Aldmeri Dominion, Skyrim's Civil War, the loss of Hammerfell as an Imperial province among other key locations, and the assassination of Emperor Titus Mede the Second by the Dark Brotherhood the Empire may be on the verge of collapse whether it held onto Skyrim or not.
Dragon Breaks And The Future Of TES
In the past Elder Scrolls games have explained some of the potential differences between different playthroughs using an in-universe concept known as Dragon Breaks. A Dragon Break is a temporal phenomena in which different events are said to occur concurrently before the timeline reconvenes. Even contradictory events can both be the truth once the Dragon Break resolves.
While this might work to brush some of the smaller decisions players have made in past games aside, it's difficult to see how this could be satisfyingly applied in the case of Skyrim's Civil War. A Dragon Break on that scale would would render Skyrim an unknowable land of contradictions ruled both by the Empire and the Stormcloaks. While Bethesda has the Dragon Break concept at its disposal, as a solution it could be just as unsatisfying as the studio simply declaring one choice canon, if not more so.
Ultimately setting The Elder Scrolls 6 after the fall of Empire of Tamriel could be the simplest solution. The main risk would be that it would undermine the choice to fight for the Empire in Skyrim, but at the very least it doesn't actually contradict the possibility of an Imperial victory in the lore.
Many fans have speculated that the next game will be set in Hammerfell. Between Oblivion and Skyrim, Hammerfell was released as an Imperial province when many Redguards continued to fight with the Aldmeri Dominion after the end of the Great War. Hammerfell could be the perfect setting, therefore, for an Elder Scrolls game told in the wake of the Empire's total collapse.
Skyrim's Civil War is far from the only challenge facing The Elder Scrolls 6. Living up to Skyrim's legacy will be an immense task for Bethesda, especially nearly ten years after the last game's immensely successful launch. Many fans will be particularly interested to see how The Elder Scrolls 6 handles some of Skyrim's key choices like the Civil War, and will use that decision to judge whether their choices in The Elder Scrolls 6 will really matter going forward.
The Elder Scrolls 6 is currently in development.