The Elder Scrolls 6 has some huge shoes to fill, and Bethesda will likely have to release a truly next-generational RPG experience to live up to over a decade of fan expectations. Though the next game will need to go above and beyond Skyrim’s scope to step out of its shadow, there are still plenty of lessons which it can take from some of Skyrim’s most interesting moments.
If The Elder Scrolls 6 is going to surpass Skyrim, it needs more content like Skyrim’s hidden boss, Karstaag, who has an interesting history across two games in the Elder Scrolls franchise. Not only that, but there are some ways that the principles underlying the player’s encounter with Karstaag could be expanded upon to make The Elder Scrolls 6 a particularly engaging and immersive experience.
Who Is Karstaag?
Karstaag can be encountered in Skyrim’s final DLC, Dragonborn. The history of the character, however, goes all the way back to The Elder Scrolls 3. In Morrowind’s Bloodmoon expansion, players could battle a Frost Giant named Karstaag who lived in Castle Karstaag on that DLC’s version of Solstheim. He was the largest creature found on the island, and had an interesting bit of backstory behind him.
Karstaag lived in his castle and was served by a tribe of Rieklings under his control. Although he had a peaceful relationship with the Nords of the nearby Skaal Village, in Bloodmoon the player can discover that the villagers are concerned by the giant’s recent disappearance. It is revealed that the Frost Giant has been captured by Hircine, the Daedric Prince known as the Lord of the Hunt. Drawn into a deadly game, the Nerevarine and Karstaag are pitted against one another in mortal combat, and the player ultimately comes out victorious.
Summoning Karstaag
In the Dragonborn DLC, Karstaag is the subject of the unmarked quest “Summoning Karstaag.” To complete this quest, players must first collect Karstaag’s skull, which can be found stuck in the ice at the end of Glacial Cave, guarded by a few Rieklings. Players then have to make their way to the Castle Karstaag Ruins. The ruins can be accessed either by unlocking a Master level door, or by going through the Castle Karstaag Caverns.
Once inside the Castle Karstaag Ruins, players need to defeat the Rieklings guarding the throne at the end and place Karstaag’s skull on it. This causes the cave to shake, and Karstaag’s hostile ghost is summoned and must be defeated. Once the player has defeated Karstaag they get the power “Summon Karstaag.” This power will summon the giant to aid in battle, though it can only be used three times before it disappears forever.
Lessons For The Future
There are a few reasons that this quest, despite its simplicity, should be a could basis for further unmarked quests in the world of The Elder Scrolls 6. For a start, it rewards far more engaged thinking than most of Skyrim’s quests. For the vast majority of Skyrim players can easily find themselves picking up objectives and simply sprinting in that direction on their compass, killing whatever needs to be killed along the way.
The fact that the Karstaag quest is unmarked in Skyrim is a return to a kind of quest design found in the original game in which Karstaag appeared, Morrowind. In Morrowind, players were expected to follow directions and try to figure out the next step in a quest themselves. Figuring out that Karstaag’s skull might have some relationship to the Castle Karstaag Ruins may not be a huge logical leap, but the unmarked quest nonetheless rewards players for engaging with the world more directly than most of Skyrim encourages.
The Karstaag quest in Dragonborn has extremely straightforward goals, but the fact that they aren’t marked makes the quest feel far more satisfying than many of the other quests found across Skyrim. Instead of simply rewarding the player with loot, the quest also rewards players with a unique power even if it is one that only has a limited number of charges.
At Brighton Digital 2020 Todd Howard suggested that a greater use of procedural generation could see the size of The Elder Scrolls 6’s map significantly surpass previous games. Increasing the scale of the world could be greatly immersive, but not if players are simply following the UI from quest objective to quest objective. By including more unmarked quests that ask players to use their own logic and intuition, The Elder Scrolls 6’s larger world could encourage greater exploration and more direct engagement.
Skyrim’s Karstaag
Although it doesn’t take it very far, the Karstaag quest in Skyrim is also a reminder of the actions of the Nerevarine in Morrowind. If players are going to feel like their actions in The Elder Scrolls 6 matter, reminders of the actions of past player characters could be key. The Dragonborn and their impact on the world shouldn’t simply vanish after their time as player character is up.
So far, each Elder Scrolls game has more-or-less erased the past player characters from the world. They insist on the player’s importance to the main story, while avoiding references the consequences of previous player character actions. Karstaag may just be one Frost Giant the Nerevarine killed, but The Elder Scrolls 6 should continue to reference the events of previous games if it wants Tamriel to feel like a living, changing world.
The Karstaag quest harkens back to a time when the world of an Elder Scrolls game felt harder to traverse, but also more mysterious. In The Elder Scrolls 6 players should be intrigued by the possibilities of any items they find and the characters they meet, even if they aren’t directly connected to any obvious marked quest. The next game won’t just need to allow players to affect the world to a greater extent, but it should also include more incentives for players to go off the beaten path and truly explore the world put before them.
The Elder Scrolls 6 is currently in development.
