Board Thread:Lore Discussion/@comment-96.252.245.207-20130116060134/@comment-24696651-20140317062613

If Bethesda really was going to give us some closure on the Dominion vs Empire thing, then TES VI probably would be around the southern Abecean and the Dominion (i.e. Valenwood, Sumerset Isles/Alinor, probably Elsweyr, possibly Anvil). That, occupies roughly the same area as Cyrodiil if we have the same scale as Oblivion (discounting seabed, but that would probably be computer generated for the most part). Unfortunately, as has already been mentioned, Elder Scrolls games do two very major things to prevent closure on the Dominion matters. They:

A. Tend to prefer the supernatural story where you defend the world from annhilation at the hands of some demon, as opposed to politically driven story (we can't count Daggerfall because that was an entirely differet game).

B. Don't tend to follow on from previous games. The most that the past game will influence the current game is some dialogue and books.

The first issue can be worked around, to an extent. Instead of having earthly affairs the focus of the story, have it as a part of main story. It will sidelined, but I'd much prefer, say, the game starting with you being recruited into an anti-Thalmor group working in the shadows to overthrow the government, than the demise of the Thalmor being recorded in a book which most people won't even read. Hell, you could even have a choice between the Thalmor and the rebels in an underground war if it was tied to the campaign: if the supernatural and mundane elements advance together, then just while the rebel masterplan to overthrow the Thalmor is executed, have the supernatural element of the story cause some cataclysm in the Thalmor court, or even the Thalmor capital of Alinor, during a very important parliament or whatever the Thalmor council secessions are called. Then the Thalmor would be utterly crushed and would be defeated regardless, or maybe have this as the first manifestation of the supernatural plot that the public notices and you must then save the world from the brink of destruction in true Elder Scrolls form.

But I digress. In any case, the best we can hope for is a story set soon after a huge Aldmeri-Imperial war in which the fate of both is sealed, and we get to live in a world in the aftermath of said war. In that instance, the idea of a game world set in the (possibly former) Aldmeri Dominion would work. But we may have only long-term aftermath of that war. In the same way that Skyrim is a long-term result of the end of Oblivion. Of course if we were lucky, the idea of an Elder Scrolls game set in the Aldmeri Dominion would lend itself quite nicely to naval mechanics. I'm not asking for Black Flag (and I probably won't get something half as good), but if you were to feature the Sumerset Isles and mainland Tamriel you'd need to have some way of getting about other than fast travel, and swimming wouldn't really do the job.

However, even if we have a story completely unrelated to Aldmeri-Imperial wars and suchlike, I think that the Aldmeri Dominion could still be a likely setting. Cyrodiil, Skyrim, and (to a lesser extent) Morrowind have all been visited (discounting Daggerfall and Arena). Blackmarsh wouldn't be very good as it wouldn't be mainstream enough for Bethesda, and the only other option that has a reasonable amount of land to explore would be Highrock/Hammerfell. We might see Elsweyr discarded in favour of Hammerfell in a Dominion setting, but those are the best options for Bethesda.