Only thing that would make me interested is if they vastly improved the NPC AI. And I don’t mean hooking them up to an LLM but improving their behaviour.

Make neutral NPCs more interactive (instead of just repeating a set of lines and otherwise ignoring anything you’re doing, unless you touch an owned item in front of them and they telepathically summon guards because only a thief would touch a bowl on an inn table).

Make hostile NPCs smarter. Part of the reason that so many people end up pigeon holed into some kind of stealth archer build is because NPCs completely forget someone is there harassing them with arrows when they can’t find them after like 30 seconds of searching. They should put up barriers to block line of fire, add torches to light up dark areas, inform others and group up to search the area. If they keep getting picked off without even seeing who was doing it, eventually the remaining survivors should try to run or lock the place up tight.

Would also be nice if the density of the world can be increased. Like not so much stuff to do, but how full the world is. Like have more than a dozen NPCs plus guards in towns. Just random people that don’t even have to interact much but are there. Instead of like 5 farmers supporting 30 guards and the lord’s household.

Also add some more dungeon layouts. Sometimes reuse makes sense, though for ruins it doesn’t make sense for something to decay in the exact same way even if the layout is the same. But there shouldn’t be any identical caves (or if there is, it should be notable that they are identical and there should be a quest or at least hidden notes or something talking about it).

I’m also not completely satisfied with the whole “everyone is about the same relative strength as you”. I get why they do the balance that way but IMO it really hurts the whole sense of progression when the whole world is always appropriately balanced against your current level. Other mechanisms could be used to bring early level areas up so that a high level character can still do interesting things there, which would also make the world more interesting. Have bandits move around and take over areas, or necromancers, or pull another encounter from a hat. But not a “oh you’re now at a level where you can fight trolls? Ok, the forests are full of them now”. But I acknowledge that this particular facet is hard to tune right and pretty subjective.

I really hope they put some attention towards these things and aren’t just building a new map and quests for a game that might as well just be called the biggest skyrim DLC.

Still very highly anticipated but without any high expectations.

I refuse to let hope for a new Elder Scrolls that I really like die until Todd Howard breaks my heart :(

If they abandon their engine I would never buy another game of theirs again. The good lore writers are gone, the weird asset/world designers are gone, absolutely nobody is left who understands what game mechanics should be like…their extremely unique engine is the only good thing Bethesda has going still, if they drop that for UE5 or anything else then they would instantly become one of the worst AAA studios when that game released.

I bet it’s still running on the same engine as oblivion Morrorwind.

FTFY

My hopes for this are low simply because Bethesda is still gonna use Creation Engine despite it being inadequate for nearly two decades now, and Starfield clearly showing it was no longer nearly good enough for a modern open world game.

What, you think Bethesda is developing this game? They’re still hard at work on the eleventy millionth Skyrim release. But this time it will be playable on the Samsung Fridge.

Yeah I can’t imagine I’ll play this full price. I may check it out on gamepass but even that seems like it’s on the chopping block.

Unlikely that day one releases on GP will continue with the way that Xbox is headed. I’d be happy to see ES6 be an Xbox exclusive though. It might be the only thing that convinces people to buy a Helix.