I love the TES games and have since Morrowind. They let me go almost any place I want and do a lot of things. However... That breadth of game seems to come at the cost of the depth of the game. For example, my housecarls. I know almost nothing about them and there is never any real chance to learn about them... yet these are people who follow me months and months of in-game time. In Solitude, you can run into a girl who is kind of flirty to a male MC, but suggests to a female MC that they hit the road together and see the world. That's just about more characterization than my ever faithful companion Lydia gets!

I'd like to see a TES game set strictly inside a single city, kind of like the setting of Thief 3. That way, there would be less room to wander, and more of a chance to have deeper characters mixed up in a longer MQ. Bethesda kind of did this with http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Redguard:Redguard, which I still believe is an underrated game. The gaming world has changed! With Oblivion having blown the doors off of TES fandom and Skyrim in the process of blowing the roof off, I think it's time for more Elder Scrolls Adventure games. Smaller wanderable map, more time spend developing characters and backstory!

Would anyone else be interested in more TES Adventures? Or am I going to get the :flamethrower: ?

I would hate this. I doubt I'd even buy it. This is almost the exact opposite of why I buy and play Elder Scrolls games.

I like to explore. I like to have the freedom to follow my nose, make up my own adventures. I play the main quest from each Elder Scrolls game once, and that's it. After that I go out on my own with all my characters.

I heartily disliked Morrowind's Tribunal expansion and the main reason was because it was set entirely inside a city. I didn't play that expansion. That's not what the Elder Scrolls games are about to me. To me, the Elder Scrolls games are about freedom, exploration. This non-linear, open-world game design is what sets Bethesda's games apart from Bioware's games. If I want small, constricted, linear gameworlds I'll play Dragon Age or KotoR.

Personally, I don't see why we can't have deeper characterizations in an open-world game. I don't think we need to sacrifice the greatest asset the series has to achieve better characterization.

Not as part of the TES series. I might play and enjoy such a game once but it wouldn't provide the years of entertainment I get out of TES games.
I'd like to see a TES game without a mainquest. I'm tired of ancient evils awakening that need to be defeated. Lets have a TES game with lots of stories that you can engage with or ignore depending on your current character.

Smaller map like Morrowind yes. That is why Elsweyr alone should be a game. But a single city. no. no. just no.

The storyline is really deep already, people just don't realize it because they take it for face value without looking deeper. TES story requires you to take the initiative to see the depth yourself.

I would not be willing to sacrifice all of the exploration available in TES games just for the sake of a more convenient story for people. Maybe if it was like a cell phone game or some small expansion or something, whatever, but a main series TES game? Absolutely not.

I'm hoping for the TES VI they do not go for a bigger map. Keep it about the size of Cyrodiil or Skyrim, and instead focus on depth, story, and unique characters.

I wouldn't play another TES game if I was confined to a small map.

Sacrificing the freedom of exploration would solidify the change from roleplaying game to action/adventure.

The city would have to be the size of an Elder Scrolls game. I don't think this is possible.

I'd like a spin off game, not a replacement for the TES "main" games. So like... 2011 we get TES V: Skyrim. 2016 we get TES VI: Summerset. But! In like 2013, we'd get Elder Scrolls Adventures: High Rock, which would take us to the city of Daggerfall and only the city of Daggerfall. I think it could be fun, but not as a replacement for the main games..

That might work, but I wouldn't throw "Adventures" into the title. It sounds like a made for the DS kids game.

Same here. If I want a really deep story with a super-tight focus I'll play a Bioware game. I play TES games because I love the freedom of being able to play any character I want, go anywhere I want, and do anything I want. Things you cannot get in a Bioware game. For example I hated the fact that I had to play a human in Mass Effect. I wanted to be an Asari! But having the freedom to choose that would have wrecked the entire plot of the game.

Like the Queen, I would prefer a game with no main quest at all. I think it is an archaic way of thinking to believe you need to have one. I just want to walk the earth, get in adventures, and help people out.That is why I ignore the main quests most of the time in TES games.

Hehe... This has already been done. And years before the DS. Redguard's full title was just that: The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard.

Honestly smaller map and better story.

The people in this thread obviously never played Battlespire!!! =[


A new adventures game would be awesome. =]

A single city campaign would work fine for a dlc but basing an entire full length TES game would not be good in my opinion. It would just get old fast always walking down streets, corridors, and etc. A city could have parks, but that's not the same. I live in a large city, I don't want to escape to one in a video game. I felt that Knights of the Nine had a good story when compared to the MQ. Put out some dlc that have a strong single story and leave the MQ alone. The MQ has never been the end all be all of Bethesda's games. And they shouldn't mess with success. The MQ are fine the way that they are in the TES games. Perhaps to a newb that type of MQ seems weak, but Bethesda's games aren't just about the MQ they're about yr character and the world around him/her.

I never played Battlespire! My computer at the time would have barfed.

One other reason I think a new series of Adventure games would do well theses days.... Redguard Adventures was limited to a certain type of video card! Now, they could use DX11 and run on anything above a smartphone. Even if they only sell to 75% of the TES Main Game audience, that would still be a huge success. There are plenty of other companies that would kill for 75% of TES sales.

I think visiting a region like Summerset Isle would actually be better off with a smaller map and deeper story. The seems to be a strongly political land, and what better way to tell that story than with an Adventures game?

You really should play TES 2: Daggerfall, assuming you haven't.

This thread brings up a really interesting point about TES, and that is that these games were actually a whole lot more intellectually challenging and deep than they are now, having increasingly sacrificed depth for breadth over the years. Part of that has to do with the general dumbing down of the mainstream games industry, but it's also just because of time crunch. Daggerfall rolled out in 1996, and it didn't compromise on anything. It was a titanic free-roaming thing that actually offered convincing geographic scale both outdoors and cities, making Morrowind look like a quaint little island getaway, and Oblivion like an amusemant park. It had infinite procedurally-generated quests too (it's taken us 15 years to come back to that), and had monstrous storyline(s) that will make your brain hurt. But of course it's made to mid 90s standards and its complete graphical content could probably fit on a single BMP file, and the majority of the money and time could go into coding and writing. The writing is the one thing I really miss most about TES. Look at how much dialogue is in Morrowind vs. Skyrim and Oblivion. Sure, there's voice acting for everything now, but at the cost of the story being pared down to practically nothing. Skyrim isn't terrible but it's still more like the starting outline of an TES story, not the full product. Don't even get me started about Oblivion.

So anyway, those glory days of having your cake and eating it too are behind us. So what can you do with this franchise that became famous for having more content than you can afford? Bethesda made their choice, and if it was the right one, well, there wouldn't be threads like this. I would like to see more parallel-released spinoff action/adventure games that were far smaller-scale but got deeper into stories and characters than the big free-roaming ones. They could even be complimentary to the huge ones, and cross over in different ways, making up for each other's deficiencies. I would buy that. I swear I would pay another sixty bucks, Bethesda, to have real dialogue back, and some actual memorable characters too. Even if the whole thing were written by Michael Kirkbride and eventually descended into incomprehensible metaphysical crazy, I'd still buy it. I could think of no better way for Beth to regain their cred after Oblivion, in fact.

what your suggesting would drive about 80% of the fans away and probably kill the series. its poison.

the only way this would work is if it didnt have TES in the title and then it wouldnt sell to begin with, as it would be a mass effect clone

I really hope a mod doesn't come along and roll this thread into the general "Next TES" thread, as it really is a detailed and unique topic that would simply get drowned in a bulk thread.


Personally, I could roll with an Elder Scrolls game that was confined to a single 'City', but it would have to be a real city, sprawling over a large area, and packed full of flavour. I'm not sure if they could pull it off. Yes, the map would be smaller, but that is no reason for it to contain any less exploration, it just would mean a shorter walk between your points of interest. I really think it would require some sort of massive 'under city' to work.

It would have to throw back to Morrowind style politics and interactions, and be a tangled web of faction interactions, back stabs, and the player's actions would need to have dramatic effects that drive ripples across the entire city.


It would be very hard to pull off well, but I do believe it could be done and still retain the feeling of exploration and epic-ness.

I could actually see something like this being viable as an expansion, but not as a seperate game. There would be very few new graphical or animation addtions, and it would essentially use the existing map and gameworld, along with mostly existing NPCs, but there would be enhanced dialog, addtional plots, new twists, and a whole lot more DEPTH to the game. Essentially all of the time and effort would be dedicated to story and dialog, instead of glitter and adrenaline. If you wanted bigger boss battles, it wouldn't really be all that great, but for any enthusiast of the world, the lore, and the story that they tell, it would be solid gold. The resources needed to produce it would be a lot more modest than a full game, which might compensate for its more limited appeal. Meanwhile, the graphics and animation people could be getting a head start on the next all-new title.

Briefly! I was not a gamer back then. I just kind of sat in front of my friend's PC and clicked on stuff. I do recall the wonder everyone else in the room felt at the insane dungeons. I was afraid of them... I would have gotten lost.





This! You said it nicely there. I think TES Adventure games would =complement= the Big World games. It would be a really cool mix... It might even draw people into TES games... assuming there is still someone out there that doesn't play them. ^_^

The single city would be utterly epic. Set it about two hundred years after Skyrim, when the Thalmor rule Tamriel... Their capitol city is a huge thing, full of jockeying Altmer nobles and desperate "lesser" races trying to find a way to survive in the big city... It could be an amazing story, with a cast of maybe twenty of thirty main characters, rather than hundreds of minor ones. I'd love it. :biggrin:

Deus Ex: Altmer Revolution

One of the main reason why I even like this game is because of the game world, so no I probably wouldn't buy it. it would have to be a BIG city.