Oblivion And On

It's almost as if Bethesda Softworks have just finished a game and so have decided to work on a new one. Imagine! Yes, a date for The Elder Scrolls V has been confirmed. Well, sort of confirmed. Well, mentioned. A bit.

"Potentially there's a new Elder Scrolls title in 2010," says Bethsoft exec Chris Oughton over at GI.biz. Woo!

Frankly, I'm going to go with reading that as "we're definitely working on a new TES game, but we're not quite sure about the release date yet" rather than "we're only thinking about doing TES5." It's possible he wasn't meant to let that slip, but let's face it, it's hardly a surprise. And with Fallout 3 scoring universally between Very Good and Really Bloody Very Good, riding that goodwill train seems a smart idea.

So, what do we want to see from TES 5? If you'd be so kind as to resist wholesale Oblivion-bashing that'd be nice (c'mon, we've done that to death already in other threads) - instead let's nobly stick to constructive critique as to what can be improved, kept, removed, added, changed, funny-hatted, whatever. Let's build TES5 right here, with the power of mere words. Strong, beautiful words.

Me, I want those bizarre insect taxi things from Morrowind to come back. Oh, and does anyone know the TES lore well enough to guess at what the setting/storyline could be? Again, I'm hoping for something closer to Morrowind's weirdness (that ribcage city was extraordinary) rather than Oblivion's somewhat vanilla Tolkieniess.

Edit - A helpful fellow named Luke drops me a line about the discovery that Bethesda's owners Zenimax have apparently recently trademarked the following for clothing, video games, documentation and telecommunication respectively:

Serial Number Reg. Number
1 77051779 SKYRIM
2 77017500 SKYRIM
3 77044247 SKYRIM
4 77022291 SKYRIM

Which rather suggests TES5 will be set in Skyrim, chilly home of the fighty Nords. Which perhaps sounds a little plain, but hopefully a good opportunity for environments rather different to Oblivion's lush forestry.