Few video game franchises can boast the level of acclaim that the Elder Scrolls franchise has achieved in the decades since The Elder Scrolls: Arena launched, though it appears that a new contender is about to step up to the plate. That game is The Wayward Realms, a new grand RPG set in an archipelago of over 100 islands. It has a surprise edge, too, as the game is coming from former Elder Scrolls developers.
Originally announcing the formation of their new studio, OnceLost Games, back in 2019, developers Julian LeFay and Ted Peterson have given a few more details about their next game and what it will entail. Long-running Elder Scrolls fans will likely be familiar with the duo's work, as they were leads on Arena and Daggerfall, the first two games in the franchise.
The Wayward Realms' newly launched Steam page paints an early picture of the game's look and tone. Besides being set in an archipelago, called "The Archipelago," with 100 "realistically scaled" islands, the Steam page is also promising massive cities with "hundreds or thousands" of NPCs, replete with plenty of other natural elements created using procedural generation.
For those unfamiliar, The Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall used procedural generation to create its map, which has helped it maintain its status as one of the largest video game maps of all time. A bigger map doesn't necessarily mean a better game, though capturing the breadth of a world is something that all games – especially RPGs – need to do successfully. That makes LeFay and Peterson's work on the early Elder Scrolls games all the more valuable.
On top of the large map, it appears that The Wayward Realms will put a heavy emphasis on player choice and their ability to affect the story. The store post lists a virtual Game Master that will help shape the story based on the player's actions, spurring other characters and factions to tailor their next moves around the player. Because of that, no two players should have the same story.
The Wayward Realms sounds like an ambitious project, and the developers' pedigree does make it all the more interesting. There's no release date currently listed on the page, though OnceLost games did share a teaser trailer for the project. With the likes of the Fable reboot and The Elder Scrolls 6 somewhere on the horizon, there are plenty of fantasy RPGs entering the gaming arena, so it'll be interesting to see where they all land.
The Wayward Realms is in development.
Source: Steam