With Elder Scrolls Online nearing its release date early next year and Fallout 4 being, most likely, the main focus for Bethesda right now; I feel that this is a good opportunity to explore the possibilities of what the next Elder Scrolls single player game could and should offer us fans. Please keep in mind that this piece is purely subjective.

1.) A Complete Combat Overhaul:

Let's face it, the main non-technical issue that plagues this series is its combat is boring and repetitive. Even in Skyrim when they tried to improve the system it still fell way short and lacked many of the mechanics that other games like Dragons Dogma or Dark Souls offers. The addition of the kill cam was a nice touch but you look at the animations and wonder, 'why can't I do that in actual combat'. So here's what I think they should do in regards to the combat in the next installment. First off I think they can learn a lot by just playing Dark Souls and Dragons Dogma and trying to re-imagine, (not copy), their system. For example in Dragons Dogma you can actually climb many of the beasts in the game and strategically hit a weak point in order to wear down the enemy. I can see Elder Scrolls implementing something like this into their next game but do it even better. For example, say their is a bandit you're sneaking up behind and you get right behind him. Instead of just using a dagger or sword or whatever to hit him with a set critical damage output you can actually use the 'grab button' to grab the bandit's head and break his neck. Or say if you're facing something larger, like a Dragon, by using the grab button you can climb and attack the beast just like in DD. Next thing, and this is probably the most important, make the enemy AI smarter. This is what made Skyrim a breeze to play through, every enemy in the game is stupid and predictable. This needs to be fixed and I have some ideas on how to do just that. First off don't have the enemy melee guys just charge straight at the player character. If he has a shield have him strafe and dodge in and out of combat. Enemy archers should always try to distance themselves from the player never switch to a dagger once the player gets close. Instead have him hit the player with the bow causing the player to stagger and giving him enough time to retreat and begin raining arrows again. Mages, like archers, should also keep their distance and depending on the player character's race they should use the spells that work best. For example; if I were a nord the enemy mage, even if he was a frost mage, should not use frost spells. Instead he should use fire or lightning. Sneaking needs to be revamped and not so easy to perform. Successful sneaking should be based more on lighting, line of sight, and cover rather than the actual skill number. Add the ability to dodge and roll in order to avoid enemy attacks. Add a cover system for archers and for sneaking. Like Fallout games make each body part susceptible to damage. Say you head-shot a bandit with an arrow, it should instantly kill him regardless of rank; same to the player character. If they or you are wearing a helmet then head-shots should not instantly kill. Give players skills with all weapons in the perk trees. Like, for example, one-handed has a skill that once unlocked the player can perform a barrage attack, like the one you see in Dragon Age. Have activated skills like a war cry to weaken and or rally enemy and allied units. Add realistic damage, that means no more enemy sponges or player sponges. Balance the smithing, enchanting, and alchemy skills so not to give the player an unfair edge. There's much more ways to improve this system as these are just some of the basic requirements that I think needs to be implemented

2.) No More Bugs No More Excuses!:

No more Bethesda! Look I'm not saying there should be absolutely zero bugs in the game. That is probably virtually impossible for games on these scales; however, it should be polished and mostly bug free (for all versions) on release. There should be no game breaking bugs, main quest breaking bugs, or exploits (like the alchemy/smithing/enchanting one in Skyrim) in the game at all. No more excuses Bethesda many developers release games just as big with little to no bugs at all. No more free passes either, from me at least. This goes for Fallout 4 as well.

3.) Better Character Development:

This is a major issue in Skyrim and all other Elder Scrolls games in terms of story and emotion. Not once in that game or any other ES game did I care about any character at all. I didn't even care about my own character. Bethesda should give the major characters some depth in the next game and try to get us to care about them. They could do this in a number ways. First better voice acting is a must. Secondly, and this may be unpopular, but I believe the protagonist should talk. Yes you heard correctly, I believe the player character should have a voice like Mass Effect (not using their dialogue system of course, don't want that). During player creation you should be able create the character; choose race, gender, looks, and then after that choose a background on the character depending on the race selected. I would like to see two for each race and a quest in the game correlating with the chosen background. For example you decided to choose an Orc as your character. Once you have completed the gender and looks another screen pops up giving you choice for your background. Like say one choice is for an Orc that lived in a stronghold all his life until it was razed to ground by some entity and your left homeless and your entire tribe was killed. Now you can make a unique quest to find and take revenge for what happened to your tribe and your home. Things like this really gives the player character more depth and I just think it's time to move away from being an unknown prisoner who is mute. Lastly your followers also need to have some sort of background and quest relating to them as well as morals. Like say you meet this retired imperial soldier who has decided to follow you for helping him out with something and you start killing innocent people. Now an honorable imperial soldier would not help you slaughter innocents. They would instead turn on you for becoming evil. Likewise for any evil follower, by doing good deeds they to will either leave your service or attack you. Speaking of morals give the player more impactful decisions. The decisions in Skyrim did nothing at all because nothing ever changed no matter what decision you chose. Decisions need more weight behind them! Character development is the key to improve upon this series.

4.) Exploration! More Is Always Better:

There's no denying that in terms of pure exploration no one does it better than Bethesda, they are simply the best. But that doesn't mean there's no room for improvement. One way is to make a larger map size, and I mean huge, to explore in. With this coming to the next generation of consoles they should be able to easily triple or maybe even quadruple the size of Skyrim. I'm talking about adding Tamerial in its entirety. They did this in Arena, I believe, but it was randomly generated so there was no attention to detail. ESO is currently doing this although it's highly unlikely that they're going to every area in full size, instead focusing on the major cities in each area. I'm talking about every area in full detail with loading screens for each area, obviously, using carriages or boats to get to each place. Now this is a pretty tall order and most likely not going happen but I think you got to at the very least do more than a single area. I'm personally hoping for them to do Elsweyr, Summerset Isles, and Valenwood myself. There needs to be more unique dungeons. They did a pretty awesome job of doing this in Skyrim but I think they can do better. More wildlife unique to the area and more pointless locations to give it a realistic touch. The main allure of these games is the exploration aspect so they should focus on making this as close to perfect as possible for the next game

5.) Refine Skyrim's Perk System:

Skyrim's new leveling system absolutely trumped Morrowind and Oblivion, in my opinion and most others. So they are on the right track but I think even though it's better it could have been so much more than a way to just upgrade the damage of your weapon. Instead of Damage outputs they should add abilities and move sets. They did this for some weapons like two handed weapon sweep in Skyrim but there could be so much more. Like, staying with the two handed weapons, you could pick a perk that allows you to do a pommel strike knocking a valid opponent on his rump for a few seconds. Maybe a perk that would allow you to throw your poisoned tip daggers for sneaky characters. The possibilities are endless, I say you add hundreds of passive, combat, sustained abilities to make every single character unique.

6.) No More Leveled NPC:

This is one thing that bothered me in every Bethesda game. Even in Skyrim were it was supposed to be a hybrid of leveled and non-leveled NPCs it was still painstakingly obvious and annoying. It just needs to go away it does nothing but annoy someone when they finally reached level 82 in Skyrim and a Bandit Marauder would still kick their butts. Instead they should revert back to Morrowind were you have to be careful were you wonder off to otherwise you'll end up going against something much stronger than you are. This adds suspense to whenever you're wondering around the landscape never knowing if you'll survive your next encounter.

7.) Multiplayer:

I know ESO is supposed to take care of any multiplayer desire for the Elder Scrolls, but I think adding something like from Dark Souls to an Elder Scrolls single player experience would do nothing but help it. I don't think I'd be in favor of co-op but I'd consider it. I think it needs something to make the game more social and allow players to chat with each other and help each other out with quests.

8.) Mods, Mods, and More Mods!:

PC has always been the best way to play Elder Scrolls for one reason: mods. I own all the games for the PC and let me tell you that without mods I wouldn't have spent over 1000 hours on these games. But I don't think it's fair to just allow us PC users to have all the fun. I believe with the next consoles being more like a PC than ever that it's time to allow the consoles users to download and create mods so they can enjoy hours of content they normally wouldn't get by playing just the vanilla game.

These are just a few ways to improve upon the Elder Scrolls for its next single player release. Most things I've mentioned can be, and I think should be, implemented in the next game. Will we see any of this, maybe not. I know that my opinions are tiny, small, and rather insignificant in the eyes of Bethesda or probably gamers in general. But I feel that regardless of what others think you should always express yourselves and let your opinions be heard. Otherwise nothing will ever change.