Bethesda RPGs are so big and take such a long time to develop that there's naturally a lot left on the cutting room floor, leaving them to be discovered by modders and given a second life. One such dropped idea was Skyrim's fully dynamic civil war, co-lead designer and former Elder Scrolls loremaster Kurt Kuhlmann tells us. And it was "pretty far along before it got cut," he says.
"The civil war was originally intended to be much more dynamic, in the sense that we were tracking if you went around and killed Imperial soldiers … and we would say, OK, you're harming the Empire in this hold … so we could see the balance of power in this hold is shifting towards the Stormcloaks, and at some point, if it shifts far enough through your open world actions, it could trigger the Stormcloaks to attack the capital city."
