The year is 2030. Elder Scrolls is one of the longest running RPG and most successful RPG series ever made. Final Fantasy has died off due to Square-Enix declaring bankruptcy and World of Warcraft 3 was a huge failure.

Now.

Lets assume that a game set in every Tamrielic province individually has been made so far.

Do you think that Bethesda is ever going to make another game that takes place in ALL of Tamriel?

No, head into Akavir!

BTW I'm guessing Bethesda has at least 300 people now, right?

By 2030 we'll all be able to jack our brains into a computer generated simulation of Tamriel and live there while our bodies are kept alive in specially designed bio-pods we pay Bethesda a monthly subscription for.

That would be cool, Akavir. Like you go there as another invasion from Tamriel heads there. Although don't know what state the empire is in to conduct an invasion.

Maybe. The technology will be a lot better and they'll probably be able to make a game that is just as detailed as any of their other games while also containing the mass of all of Tamriel. I'm not sure I'd really want that though. It's too big, it's too much to deal with. Even with better technology it would take years and years and years to make it all. I'd rather see individual provinces, two provinces at once at most.

I also don't want to go to Akavir unless things really really change there. I'm not sure why everyone always [censored]/fangirls over Akavir anyway. I don't think it sounds too appealing.


In 20 years? That's a little ambitious.

Well, apart from the Akavir thing (Akavir is filled with loads of bizzare mysterious stuff, that's why) I agree. I'd rather see provinces done jsut on a much larger scale. Have a 200 square mile gameworld with cities with 500 buildings or something. You could have it just as detailed, but on a much larger scale.

Hehe, well it wasn't meant to be taken seriously. Looking back 20 years though technology has come an unbelievable ways. Doom was like the pinnacle of gaming and a pioneer in 3D technology. If you were playing Doom when it was released a lot of the things we play now would probably have sounded totally far out there then too.

Who knows what we'll be doing 20 years from now. :goodjob:

I do agree with what someone earlier posted, a game with the scope of all of Tamriel would be too unfocused. Aside from the development time I can't imagine what trying to play a game of that size would entail.

Think of it like this: This is the ELDER SCROLLS. It's all about doing WHAT you want, going WHERE you want. There's no such thing as "Unfocused". You could have one main quest for each different province. Thousands of side quests.

Think of it like an MMO. WoW is roughly the size of Tamriel x2 it seems, if not larger, and yet Blizzard is able to maintain it with a few thousand quests.

Basically, imagine an Elder Scrolls X: Tamriel. Don't limit your imagination by what we can do now, how much time it would take. This is a world in which Elder Scrolls games each rake in a billion dollars. Now imagine the game.

Uh, well firstly, I don't want an MMO. Secondly, if they made one in all of Tamriel, I feel that there would be far too little attention given to each individual province and what is available in each province will have to be made far smaller and have far less content due to the fact that manpower is not infinite. It's a quality versus quantity issue. There is such a thing as unfocused.

Did I say I was talking about it BEING an MMO? Are you unaware of the difference between thinking of something LIKE an MMO and it actually being an MMO.

And how is there such a thing as unfocused in a sandbox game? Unfocused... on what? What is supposed to be focused on?

I'd also like to point out that you are not good at math.

If 1 province requires, say, 50,000 man hours, then 9 provinces doesn't require INFINITE man hours, it requires 50,000 times 9 man-hours.

You have this odd assumption that detail is impossible when I am talking about a hypothetical future with as mane employees as would be needed for this sort of thing.

Fleshing out the world. If there's too many different cultures and subcltures and political systems and stories and such, they won't be able to get anywhere near as much attention as if you mainly focused on one or a few.

SAYS WHO?

That's the problem, you keep saying that it WILL be undetailed. If we were to literally MERGE separate games about each province, then those provinces' cultures and subcultures wouldn't magically lose their content, man.

1000+1000+1000+1000 =/= less than 4000.

Development doesn't have to be with the same number of people over the same period of time as Oblivion or Skyrim.

Yes, but if you could make the same amount of content with 1 province or 9, you will have 1/9th the focus on each if you make 9. It's simple maths. If they have the resources to make 9 times the amount of content as Oblivion, they would end out with the same amount of effort into different things as Oblivion, just 9 sets of this focus. Whereas if they did one province, they'd have a much stronger focus on one area. Now, it's a matter of personal choice, but I'd rather see a highly detailed single province than a sparsely detailed 9 provinces. It doesn't matter how many people are working on it, the ratio is the same. And the same with, say, cities. You could have one provinces with the same number of cities that are 9 times the size or have 9 x the cities that are all the same size.

I'm not basing this on their current capabilities, but on alternative methods for using the capabilities they have at the time.

Eh, who knows. If we are talking about the future, this really doesn't belong in the Skyrim section.

Who knows whats going to happen in twenty years. We could all be dead

I think it'll go something like this:

2011: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

2015 - Elder Scrolls VI: Argonia = next gen graphics, better more unique art design, new talent, larger worldspace

2019 - Elder Scrolls VII: Hammerfell = with the cash raked in from both V and VI Bethesda embark to create a massive revisitation of the area explored in Daggerfall. This time with both Hammerfell and High Rock completely fleshed out. Bethesda hires better a larger team with better talent, and at this point begins to fully separate the series stylistically from its more generic fantasy past. Much larger worldspace, much more elaborate and unique art design, photorealistic graphics and lifelike animation, better writing and plot. The Elder Scrolls is now the highest grossing game series in the market.

2023: Elder Scrolls VIII: Alinor. Now Bethesda embark to bring the complete southwest of Tamriel its much needed due. Summerset Isles, Valenwood and Elsweyr with Pyandonea are all delivered in an about as equal detail, size, and quality as Hammerfell. Once again a success thanks to Bethesda's growing staff and good business decisions.

2027: Elder Scrolls IX: Akavir. The most ambitious project yet. Bethesda distance themselves from Tamriel briefly to bring us an entire continent! This time the otherworldy continent of Akavir is brought to the masses. With Bethesda's ever strengthening art department and huge staff of level designers and programmers, Akavir is rendered in its fullest detail. Expect a world even more alien than Morrowind.

2031: Elder Scrolls X: Nirn. The penultimate game. Bethesda after all its sucesses has hired its largest team yet to bring to the world the entire planet of Nirn in an epic telling of the final battle between Tamriel and Akavir and the intrusions of the Daedra. By this point the game world is so photorealistic that it will fool people for reality. Pretty much the game of the century.

Oh one can hope... :rolleyes:

Think about this for a moment, dude. You want more detail... how much detail is too much, though? Are you really that interested in seeing the mold growing under that potted plant? What benefit will that bring the game? Do you want the game to have a few thousand dungeons in just a few square kilometers of space? Don't you want some space left over for modders?

Detail is good. But you are talking about too much detail. You can't pack content TOO tightly into just one province, that would drive anyone insane.

It's better to spread content out rather than shove it all in one place.

No we must work at their farms inside the game and if we get enough money (In game!) we could buy our freedoom and go do whatever we like :hubbahubba:

That's not quite what I meant by detail. I still want a huge map, actually would make the province feel more real, assuming of course that the map wasn't too empty. I meant as in you can have the many different smaller main questlines or you can have one big one that could have more thought put into it. And also the city example. Rather have 5 cities of 250 than 50 cities of 25. Have the culture and society of one place more fleshed out with smaller elements of other cultures rather than more hollow impressions of 9. That's how I would personally prefer it.

As an allegory, I'd rather see England at normal size than all of Europe the size of England.

In the far-flung future of Tamriel there is ONLY WAR! ... *cough*

Actually, in my honest opinion. And I may be committing blasphemy for this but I hope that Bethesda put the Elder Scrolls to rest before 2030. I believe every great series has a limit, go out classy rather than die flogging a dead horse, and I also want to say to my children. "Back in my day we had the Elder Scrolls, they sure don't make RPG's like that anymore."

However...



If this is possible by 2030. Hell yeah! :rock:

So you mean to make a province that is closer to a real country's size?

Closer too, yes. Though not quite the same scale of course. I don't really want it Daggerfall size. That would just be overwhelming.

By 2030 the http://palgn.com.au/18461/rumour-bethesda-mmo-on-the-way/ will be the most successful game in existence, where every province will be included and will be involved in a struggle for global domination.

Doubt it. Bethesda and TH have always seemed rather insistent on keeping TES singleplayer. Plus, they'll b focusing as many people as possible on Skyrim. I'm surte Zenimax just has another franchise being made into an MMO, or just a new franchise.

By 2030 they will still be focused on skyrim?