Former Bethesda lead artist Nate Purkeypile hopes that Elder Scrolls 6, whenever it happens, is nothing like Assassin's Creed.
That Ubisoft franchise – younger than The Elder Scrolls by about 10 years, but with nearly triple the number of main games – demonstrates a sin any series could succumb to: being boring. As Purkeypile tells Esports Insider in a new interview, "Ubisoft games, despite being fun, are very repetitive and by the numbers."
"They don't have the same sort of expression and weird things you find off to the side," he continues, referring to Skyrim's underground city Blackreach. The mushroomy cavern was "totally not on the schedule" when he started to work on it with other devs, Purkeypile explains, but Bethesda was right to leave room for experiments.
"Giving people the freedom to do what they want is what I think makes those games successful because then it's not this checklist," he observes. Though, Purkeypile notes it's now "a lot harder" for Bethesda devs to act with impunity now that the publisher is a much bigger operation than it was in 2011.
But "I would hope that Elder Scrolls VI has some new ideas, like systems you’ve never seen before. Who knows, maybe magic works in some completely different way, or there’s some new perk tree," Purkeypile says.
He continues, "I've always wondered what's outside of the continent of Tamriel. It's like one big landmass, basically. Isn't there a whole planet to explore? What else is out there? That's what I've always wondered."
