The Elder Scrolls 6: Should Bethesda Look At Bringing Some Mechanics From Daggerfall Back?

The Elder Scrolls series has only recently taken off, with it first getting popular attention (albeit still remaining a niche title with Morrowind, and with Oblivion finally breaking the series into the mainstream, and Skyrim becoming the kind of monster success the series is associated with today. Arena and Daggerfall, the first two games in the series, remain curiosities to most of the gaming public, more than anything else.

But what this means is, mechanics from those older Elder Scrolls games can now easily be brought back and reintroduced to modern Elder Scrolls games- for most players, they would be new. Something as basic as making the world far more dangerous to venture into at night, encouraging rests at inns, to more complicated mechanics, like weapon enhancements, custom spell creation, and the more complex interlocking web of politics, reputation, and religion, all of which interacted with each other and the game, making unexpected things happen, could all return.

Look, Daggerfall is the forebear to modern Elder Scrolls games- so a lot of what it did survives in newer entries in the series, too. But it was more nuanced, more complex, than the series would become in its later years. Maybe with The Elder Scrolls 6, Bethesda could look into reintroducing some of the nuance that Daggerfall was known for back into the mix- in the process, they’d also reverse the trend towards casualization that the series has been associated with for the last few entries.