Elder Scrolls General Discussion & Speculation

Apparently there’s a bit of anti LGBTQ drama going on in the Skyrim Special/Anniversary Edition Nexus. Some person is making mods to remove same sex marriage, make the few lgbtq characters straight, etc. Plenty more of us are making a bunch of lgbtq mods but it’s a weird time to go on the Skyrim Nexus, just FYI if anyone needs that info.

The heteros are desperate to feel oppressed without having to deal with any of the consequences.

I don’t believe anything until it comes with an actual named source, but honestly, what really caught my eye is the remasters of older games, Elder Scrolls AND Fallout. Be nice to see those done up in a more modern version.

Though I worry about console exclusivity. Like... These are major franchises, it’s crazy to limit them to just Xbox, but Microsoft’s already aiming to do that with Starfield...

The Elder Scrolls 6 is still "five plus years away"



you guys better be enjoying all this batch of AAA/AA rpg gayming cause it seems that after Dreadwolf we are in a drought again haha,I think Greedfall 2 will release in 2025 at the latest and it will be the last, hope I'm wrong! (but if I'm not, it will be a good time for me to play lots of isometric rpg gaymes)

The development time is insane now. I really wish they'd reuse assets to make sequels so we get more than one a generation-actually we got Zero elder scroll games during the PS4/Xbox one generation. It is possible that this one will be cross-generation going into XBOX's next system.

From all the reporting of “messed up” game launches (anthem, cyberpunk, and red fall) by Jason schrier, there’s a component where they waste quite a few years of development, often re-starting several times, and have very long periods of crunch at several stages of development, not even just launch but at key times for investors and higher ups expecting progress. I think it’s likely a successful game’s development can be uncomfortably similar to a drama filled launch. We just don’t hear about it and the fanboy culture would reject investigation (like when Elden Ring released, there were reports of crunch and a few statements that made it clear the game was soft relaunched at least once).

at least in the three known disaster games, it’s likely poor management/corporate expectations lead to a lot of these problems. But I also think open world, massive games, lend themselves to development hell. I keep seeing devs say it’s now a 5 year cycle, but it’s mostly Assassin Creed games that follow that. Elden Ring was potentially shorter, re-used animations, and was delayed by the pandemic. Meanwhile Starfield, Dreadwolf, and Cyberpunk were longer than 5 years. By a lot. 

so it seems like the worst of both worlds. Games take longer and can have lots of crunch. I’d also argue from an economics stand point, long development will put downward pressure on corporate expectations for labor costs. But indie games are getting better and better with more options, unlike movies where similar things are resulting in only blockbusters. 

So I investigated this new monetization of a 12 year old game:

They patched a bunch of bugs. A little late, but okay I guess.
They made it so you can make bigger mods .esl by expanding the record limit by 100% meaning many more mods, at least for PC. Okay.
They updated the Creation Kit to be more usable. Great.
They introduced a new paid mod shop that mod authors can apply to be on. This is the can of worms.


So these things are not…. Great. Its’s always rough that mod authors don’t get compensated for DLC levels of work. But let’s be real, Bethesda and now Microsoft taking a pretty large cut of pretty basic house mods and armor is not good for mod authors. So it’s possible some mod authors would make more money the old fashioned way (donations, nexus pays (I made 300 bucks)). Plus these mods are curated to an extreme degree by Bethesda and are all pretty small. There’s a companion with a lot of dialogue. Neat. But it has a fraction of the content free companion mods have. Boo. Also these mods essentially need patches to function, even on console, which means you have to navigate on Xbox three mod interfaces and patching on Xbox looks like a nightmare. PlayStation Skyrim appears to not be able to get these things. Though I heard PS Skyrim updated and became unlaunchable. Xbox players basically lost all their modded saves, hopefully temporarily. 

So, if you are on Xbox there’s now more pressure to pick a side, as in free mods only or paid mods only because no one on Xbox will probably keep up with making the required patches. Which opens a whole can of worms about Microsoft Bethesda potentially tricking Xbox players into buying broken micro transaction content while never actually allowing them to mod the game very much and using that limitation to encourage buying future content. 

on pc there’s ways around this but already if you make mods you had to work around several versions of Skyrim. Already today I got a message on nexus to make a patch for my mod so it works with a paid mod. In order to do that I would need to own that mod. Imagine the pressure for mod authors to do that for all of them or face numerous bug flags that might limit downloads (and therefore compensation).


this model will likely be rolled out eventually to FO4 and will probably be the base model for Starfield. 

This development, while potentially benign on PC eventually has basically guaranteed that Skyrim level modding Starfield and the next Elder Scrolls might be more difficult for the former and potentially impossible for the later.