Board Thread:Lore Discussion/@comment-96.252.245.207-20130116060134/@comment-1992639-20131023161241

When looking at a possible Elder Scrolls 6 I ask myself several things:

1) Will the license holder force Bethesda to delay this game by several years? For now, the license holder may not want to spread fans of the franchise more thin over both ESO and TES6. However, after 3-4 years when people walk out of ESO, a new TES6 may draw people back in with cross-game promotion. This also gives Bethesda a chance to come up with a brand new engine. It's no mystery that Skyrim was buggy and part of that reason was a repeatedly polished engine and recycled code.

2) With ESO taking place in an earlier era, will Bethesda be inspired to break the continuation where each new Elder Scrolls game takes place after the previous game? It's possible with this in mind that TES6 may take place in a much earlier era. Also, Skyrim gave us a lot of content relating to Tiber Septim, perhaps we will be his contemporary in TES6.

3) If TES6 does take place after Skyrim, we may have to skip several decades first, or atleast to a year where both Ulfric and Tullius are dead, so that it won't matter what side we picked during Skyrim. We also would not have to worry about the gender and identity of the Dragonborn, although we could expect that the cover art of a male Nord represents the canonical Dragonborn.

4) It's possible that relations between the Empire and the Thalmor have deteriorated, making the people of Skyrim agree far more on standing with the Empire. Perhaps the player will have to unite various countries/states to wage war on the Dominion. Not impossibly, some greater force may be behind the actions of the Dominion, maybe a Daedra, or more shockingly an Aedra with intentions of creating change. We may for the first time travel all over Tamriel, but in a manner where we pick a destination and get a number of connected zones that make up part of a world, similar to how Solstheim and Skyrim are two separate entities.

5) We may not receive a TES6 at all. Skyrim cooled down pretty fast already just a year after release. There was a lot of hype but it did not endure too well. Perhaps they will alter the formula and reinvent the genre. Alternately, they may first try a different kind of game in the setting. I can imagine a RTS would do well to solve the Dominion - Empire war. Ofcourse a TES6 would probably still sell. But would a TES7?