The Elder Scrolls VII: Everything We Know
Nine years ago the world of video games changed forever. November 11th, 2011 marked the release of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and with it the human experience was forever changed. Philosophers no longer had to ponder the great questions of existence. War was now a thing of the past. Toil, distress, displeasure itself, forever banished from our minds. All that remained was this: how could Bethesda ever hope to follow up this masterpiece?
Many believed that the next title in the critically acclaimed series would be The Elder Scrolls VI. However, following the recent cancellation of this title, new details have been revealed. Recently, tech giant Microsoft purchased Zenimax and Bethesda for a whopping 7.5 billion dollars. Now I don’t have to tell you that 7.5 billion smackaroos is a whole lot of dough. What many may not know is that only 1.05 billion of that sum, a measly 14%, actually went toward the purchase of the companies themselves. The remaining 86% went toward former CEO of Bethesda Todd Howard. As part of this deal, Todd Howard was granted this money and appointed as Leading Director of Supervisorial Services on High, long may he reign, of Microsoft. As his first edict, Lord Howard immediately canned TES VI. In an interview with The Rockford Herald, he stated:
Yeah well you know we like to think big here at Microsoft. Kind of ironic right? So counting you know it’s supposed to go one, two, three, so on and so forth. It’s very passé. Not revolutionary at all. We’re gonna hop straight over that one. Forget all the ideas we had there and move straight on to seven.
This decision was bold to say the least. Many in the gaming community were initially skeptical of the move, until last night when more details of TES VII were revealed. Slated for release in only 6 hours, Bethesda is promising an entirely new level of entertainment. Every prior Elder Scrolls title has been restricted to using only 15 KB of memory at any point in time. It has been revealed that this limit has ballooned up to an insane 2 MB. With this newfound power, it is expected that the player character will be able to strafe left and right, jump at least one and a half times per second, and cast over 15 different spells. Now I know what you’re thinking, “There’s no way!”, or “This guy’s a loon!” But, dear readers, it gets even more exciting.
Along with this massive improvement to gameplay, Bethesda has made a significant advancement in graphics. No longer shall video games be confined to simple, flat colors. Using bleeding edge technology and scientific discoveries, Bethesda has discovered a method for rendering dithered textures in real time. While we are still years and years away from smooth gradients, this incredible step will certainly change the landscape of 3D graphics for generations.
But enough about the technical advancements of this game. Each Elder Scrolls title drops the player into a rich fantasy world, filled to the brim with centuries of history and troves of unique characters and stories. In Morrowind the protagonist is the mythical Nerevarine, reincarnation of the great Lord Indoril Nerevar. In Skyrim, the dragonborn. A mortal being blessed by Akatosh with the blood and soul of a dragon. The Elder Scrolls VII will relocate to a new locale: Black Marsh. Home of the Argonians, Black Marsh is a mysterious and often overlooked province of Tamriel. At the center of Argonian culture is the Hist: a race of ancient, sentient trees. The protagonist will play as the Bark-Whisperer, a mythical figure only once before mentioned in the series. Over the course of the game the player will complete the 437 Hist-ulations. This main questline is said to take, at minimum, a staggering 2,000 hours. This includes a rather lengthy sequence where the player must plant a tree and wait for it to grow and envelop them in real time. By the end of the story the prophecy will be fulfilled: the player will become a fully fledged Hist tree and no longer be allowed to move, interact with characters, or really even play the game in general.
Truly, this visionary title will resound with gamers across the world. Releasing in only 5 hours, The Elder Scrolls VII: Black Marsh will be priced at $62.99 on most major platforms. With the exception of Xbox, where purchasing the game will credit the buyer’s Microsoft account $30.
