If Bethesda wants The Elder Scrolls 6 to feel like a true sequel, I need it to wrap up a story that's been building since Oblivion and Skyrim

Throughout the Elder Scrolls series, we’ve dealt with gods, monsters, and dragons. But while champions like the Hero of Kvatch and the Dragonborn have been saving the day, another evil has been planting its seeds all over Tamriel – and they’re far more insidious than Mehrunes Dagon and Alduin. In fact, by the end of Skyrim, these villains have arguably brought Tamriel to its knees.

What’s most shocking is these bad guys aren’t Daedric Princes with unlimited power, or ancient dragons fated to destroy the world. They’re just a well-organized, powerful, and highly intolerant group of elves known as the Aldmeri Dominion.

The Aldmeri Dominion is an empire of elves who see all other races as inferior, and their beef with Tamriel is purely based on envy over a human ascending to godhood while no elf has ever achieved this. As a result, they want to ban the worship of Talos and deny his divinity. Some time after Oblivion, they defeat The Empire in a war, then force them to ban Talos worship across Tamriel.

This kicks off the Stormcloak Rebellion in Skyrim after the population refuses to give up worshiping a god they know exists. While this bloody civil war is going on, The Dominion, the real enemy, watches from afar as their foes continue to weaken each other. What’s worse, it’s hinted that similar civil wars are starting to erupt across Tamriel.

If The Elder Scrolls 6 is set somewhere like Hammerfell or High Rock (which are believed to be the frontrunning options), some time after Skyrim, then Tamriel could be a very different place. The Talos dispute is likely to have impacted more regions than just Skyrim. With the Dominion being the ones behind this chaos, the population of Tamriel could be thoroughly sick of them.

Payback

Wherever The Elder Scrolls 6 is set, it needs to serve as a microcosm for all of Tamriel, allowing every province to feel included, even if we only visit the one. It also needs to finally let the Aldmeri Dominion take center stage as the big bads of the setting – but only so that we can utterly, and definitively, see them defeated. Something many Skyrim players will likely find highly cathartic, given it was denied to us in that game.

But then again, this is an Elder Scrolls game, and it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that we’re given the option to side with the Dominion and help them win. However, this risks continuing a story that really needs to end. Not just so players can finally enjoy getting revenge on the Dominion – something they’ve wanted to do since Skyrim – but so that this story doesn’t drag on to Elder Scrolls 7.

In Skyrim, players saw the threat of the Dominion, but we understood that we’d need to deal with them another day and that they only avoided justice this time because the Dragonborn was busy taking care of Alduin, a more immediate threat. The people of Skyrim were so caught up fighting amongst themselves that the cause of their conflict flew under the radar, but this cannot be the case by the time the credits roll in The Elder Scrolls 6.

Let's not forget that the development time of Elder Scrolls games is long – generationally long – and some players have been looking forward to taking down the Aldmeri Dominion since 2011. It’s now 2025, so if we’re denied the opportunity in The Elder Scrolls 6 and made to wait another decade and a half, we’re probably going to lose interest in this story altogether. New players may not even know or care who they are to begin with, not having the connection to Skyrim that many of us have.

Arguably, long development time is a key reason this story needs to be concluded. Bethesda needs to understand that it can’t make such a vicious group of villains, then have them get away with their antics for multiple games. The story needs to be paid off eventually, and the Aldmeri Dominion needs to get their comeuppance. Their story is intrinsically linked to the worship of Talos, too, so this should play a role in the conclusion of the arc if it's to come full circle.

It’s also not going to be enough to see the Aldmeri Dominion’s armies and ships burn, to see them chased from Tamriel while the land rallies against them. For real catharsis, for The Elder Scrolls 6 to be a true sequel to Skyrim and even Oblivion, the Dominion needs to suffer a moral loss by seeing Talos worship restored across Tamriel. Only then can this story be concluded and the series finally move on from the Aldmeri Dominion – who we've loved to hate for a long, long time.

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