This thread is for ideas and suggestions for future Elder Scrolls games, and to keep all the discussion in one series of threads.

We also have an official thread specifically for http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1515206-tes-vi-location-and-setting-speculation-19/ suggestions for future games.
Now that Skyrim has been released the number of suggestions and ideas for the next ES game are starting to show up. We have a long way to go before we get another ES game and all topics like this will be closed and either transferred or referred to this one.

Please keep any discussion of Skyrim in the correct forums.

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1515172-official-beyond-skyrim-tes-vi-52/

I'm watching the U4 engine video too. Holy mo, I sure hope ESVI will be made with this baby in mind ...

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-F6RYZdld3gQ/VOfwYwCcYtI/AAAAAAAACTI/iCmHzcWXThk/s141-p/15%2B-%2B2

Here's what I think, coming from a modder for TES games and an indie game developer on the UE4.

No. Why? Well, firstly, doing any landscape there requires you to jump through many hoops just to get something other than a flat plane. In TES's engine, I can make landscape pretty easily.

Also, you have to manually adjust lightmaps for anything other than a simply plane or cube, which is a real pain in the rear. Also, dialogue system + inventory system have to be coded in manually. On the other hand, if Bethesda were to do this, it would be far easier to change the UI. But the drawbacks outweigh the benefits IMO.

Okay ... but if it's such a pain, why do you develop indie games with it?

If Bethesda can make the necessary adjustments to its engine to allow larger and faster-to-build environments rather than a 6km sprint from one point of the map to the other, I'm all for it. UE4 looks beautiful and gave me the impression that it's easy to build and use and can make gigantic landscapes. But I'm no programmer, so ...

Because I currently have no money to build the game. I'm just bootstrapping the best that I can at the moment. Later on, I'll hire a programmer to completely overhaul the landscaping system to be more like TES, as UE4's landscaping is a total farce.

There have been discussions, and UE4 does have an open world tool built-in. But it looks unwieldly to use and takes ages to build the lighting. Gamebryo is just easy to use - and I'm pretty sure even Obsidian loved how easy it was to make landscapes and quests on the engine for New Vegas.

Gamebryo may be easy to use but it looks like 2005 in Bethesda's hands. Maybe other developers can do better with it (that I don't know of,) but Gamebryo by Bethesda looks ancient. The Witcher 2 (2011) looks like 2011, not 2005 like Skyrim. After The Witcher 3 I doubt Bethesda will dare come with a new iteration of Creation, Gamebryo, whatever, the gap would be terrible and too visible. Being easy to mod is great for modders and people who use mods, but the majority of their players don't mod and don't use mods and they deserve a modern game on a modern engine.

Oh, and also let's not forget the freaking Cry Engine.... Kingdom Come Deliverance is in alpha and looks like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYvfiyPBoGM

Given that Beth is well aware how mods effect their games shelf lives (Up to and including pulling the plug on the 100mb restriction), them catering to and supporting the modding community is par course.

"Bethesda’s Todd Howard told G4 in the latest episode of X-Play he prefers mods over DLC and doesn’t understand why so many game companies don’t provide users the tools to create their own content nor why they don’t allow modding, period."

http://www.vg247.com/2012/03/01/todd-howard-mods-make-your-game-better-more-companies-should-allow-them/

Having the engine be easy to mod is a no brainer for Bethesda and they have many times expressed that mods are huge reason why their games have such huge shelf lives beyond 5 years or so.