SGF Interview: How The Elder Scrolls Is Looking Beyond The Elder Scrolls 6

The Elder Scrolls has endured for many years since its debut decades ago. Fantasy worlds with strong foundations tend to lure in fans all on their own, but there's something special about this particular universe. There are a ton of possibilities, lots of lore, and, at its core, it encourages exploration and discovery.

It's no wonder that fans are still playing multiple franchise entries to this day. In fact, The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim has swaths of people who still play it, with a higher active player count than many new releases. So you can see why The Elder Scrolls Online has endured since its 2014 launch, as it enters its 12th year in operation.

We spoke to Elder Scrolls Online Director Nick Giacomini and Associate Design Director Jason Barnes about the past, present, and future of ESO. With any luck, it'll also be integrated into The Elder Scrolls 6.

Zenimax Online just announced a seasonal model for The Elder Scrolls Online, and things are changing quite significantly. In addition to new content drops, a lot of systems are being revised, including rolling full class reworks, and many tweaks that have been requested by the community for years.

As Barnes puts it, The Elder Scrolls Online is entering a new era: "MMOs are a big process where there is a lot of work that goes into a game like ESO, and it's cool to see everything come together, and also learn that it's really important to listen to the community. We take in a lot of feedback on what we're doing, which is kind of one of our approaches going forward with the game, is definitely being more open, with a lot more communication, and also just building a world that players love calling home, and get attached to, having stories and characters and things for people to do constantly, and for them to build relationships with other players. There are so many pieces that go into an MMO like ESO, just when it all works, it's always exciting."

Giacomini agrees, in a way that also serves as an elevator pitch for why lapsed fans should return: "Yeah, absolutely, we've not quite covered all of Tamriel yet, but most of it, and the key thing is that players get to experience different cultures, different cities, like throughout the entire continent, and beyond the different regions. So if you love Elder Scrolls, and what Bethesda has created it's been our honor to be able to tell the stories that take place during the interactive, and you know, really build things out and be able to tell that history for our players. So, absolutely, I think that Elder Scrolls Online is a great game to get into Elder Scrolls."

Barnes explains how easy it is for ESO to coexist with mainline entries (including remasters): "They coexist really nicely! A good example is when Oblivion Remastered came out recently. It was something a lot of people had already played. But for some, it was their first Elder Scrolls game, and it was cool because we got a lot of people who played that and then came over, and they're like, 'oh, this area exists in ESO,' and it's different here in this era, because it's hundreds and hundreds of years prior to it, but that's always one of the cool things, whenever we are revisiting, like, a main area from the single-player games, especially the newer ones."

Working in tandem with Bethesda has been a staple of the game, even when it was first in active development. It was being worked on even before Skyrim came out, which was an interesting process for the team: "We went through it with Skyrim too, like early on, when we started on ESO development, Oblivion was fresh at the time, Skyrim hadn't come out yet, right, and so we were developing it at the same time that the Bethesda team was developing Skyrim, and so just having that communication with that team back and forth, and being able to see, like, 'what are you guys doing over there' was helpful. Because when we launched ESO, we had Skyrim zones, so we were working with that team and making sure that we were talking back and forth and everything like that. So, yeah, like, even going into the future, that's something that will continue to do, you know, no matter what number mainline game, and because, yeah, we're gonna keep going."

To that end, I asked the team about potential Elder Scrolls 6 incorporation, and they were hopeful. Warming up to the answer, we got the revelation that a lore master at Bethesda is still working tirelessly to keep everything together: "So we work really closely with Bethesda. We actually have someone on staff called the Lore Master, and his job is specifically to keep all the huge history of The Elder Scrolls in his brain. What should we touch, or what shouldn't we touch, right? We get a lot of freedom in doing lots of cool stuff, but we're going to make sure that we're both not doing something that cancels each other out."

As far as seeing characters in future mainline entries, the team is hoping it'll happen: "We are in the second era, so things will be a bit different, but that would be great. So we're in communication, so it's possible. I have no idea if that will actually happen, but yeah, we do have a lot of freedom to kind of explore and develop a lot of our own core."

It's incredible what the Elder Scrolls Online team has accomplished in 12 years. The game was already pretty alluring at launch because of how ambitious it was, and entering this new era of player feedback, it could run for another 12 years. Hopefully we'll see The Elder Scrolls 6 before then.