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If Elders Scrolls 6 steals one thing from Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom, it should be Link’s best cheat powerEscape those caves in double-quick time
Escape those caves in double-quick time
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun
Worse still, this disastrous feat of orienteering has now become my overriding memory of Skyrim. For all its great sidequests and its ever-increasing number ofexcellent mods, all I ever think about are its damn caves. Just the thought of loading up that save file again makes me grimace, and I’m starting to dread the thought of getting stuck in another one whenever the heckThe Elder Scrolls 6comes out. But I’ve been playing a lot ofThe Legend Of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdomthis past week, and cor, I’m immediately jealous of Link’s Ascend ability. As part of his new slate of powers, Ascend lets him instantly woosh through almost any ceiling as long as there’s a traversable bit of terrain above it. That kind of power wouldn’t have been half handy for my poor old wood elf, and it’s precisely what makes exploring Tears Of The Kingdom’s caves so enjoyable. So if there’s one thing The Elder Scrolls 6 shouldstealtake note of, please let it be this.
The Elder Scrolls VI – Official Announcement TeaserWatch on YouTube
The Elder Scrolls VI – Official Announcement Teaser
The last known sighting of my very trapped wood elf. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Bethesda Softworks
In classic Nintendo fashion, many of these caves have been designed with Ascend in mind. A lot of Hyrule’s caves are pretty damp, wet spaces for Link to scamper about in, which can make climbing up their slippery rock faces a pretty difficult task. Try as you might, Link will constantly lose his grip and slide back down to where you started when you try and do a bit of rock-climbing here - much like he would do outside when it’s raining. That’s where Ascend comes in, letting you zip up through things like wooden awnings jutting out above you to claim precious monster spoils lying on top of it, or literally slugging your way through the rock face itself to reach secret, gated off caverns that don’t otherwise have any other discernible entrances.
It’s magical stuff and instantly makes every single space more interesting to explore and interact with. Each cave becomes a puzzle in its own right, and the thrill of finding a new one never dies, as you never quite know what you’re going to find down there. And yes, that’s with the full acknowledgement that it did also take me an embarrassingly long time to fully rewire my brain to remember I evencouldascend early on. I’m not ashamed to admit that there was a lot of endless running about and me yelling ‘WHAT THE HECK AM I MISSING HERE???’ in my early hours of playing Tears Of The Kingdom, and each time the penny eventually dropped I cursed my own infantile idiocy like you wouldn’t believe.
Will I ever see daylight again? Who can say? |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Bethesda Softworks
But Ascend’s puzzle potential isn’t what makes it so stealable - although that is certainly part of it. For me, it’s the way it effectively lets you nope out of your current predicament that makes it so appealing. If you’re deep underground and suddenly come across a monster that’s miles out of your league, for example, you can often just Ascend and get the hell out of there right away and get back to doing something else. Tears Of The Kingdom certainly isn’t short of things to do, and you never know - maybe the place where Ascend ends up plopping you out will end up sparking some other line of enquiry as you catch sight of something other, unknown, interesting thing, and send you down a whole new path you wouldn’t have found otherwise.
Oh, to be able to slip through the void and emerge from my rocky hellscape! |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Nintendo
It’s not just an easy get out of jail free card, though, either. It also means you don’t ever have to backtrack when you eventually ‘complete’ a cave, either. Some of Tears Of The Kingdom’s caves have a clear entrance and exit, but many don’t, and being able to swim through the bedrock above is just a brilliant way of speeding up the flow of your exploration. It’s both a shortcut straight to the good stuff, and a handy get out clause if you need it.
Would you say Link is more of a Diglett or Dugtrio? |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Nintendo
Of course, far be it from me to tell Bethesda what they should and shouldn’t include in their next Elder Scrolls game. I’ll leave that to the actual experts. But I’m not lying when I say that I’ve thought a lot about my poor, abandoned Skyrim elf this week, and how something like Ascend would have been absolutely amazing in Skyrim. And hey, if Bethesda don’t take note, perhaps the army of Skyrim modders out there will fill in the gaps. Please, do it for the sake of my poor, emaciated wood elf, who’s been rotting in their eternally fluorescent rock grave ever since the end of 2017. They deserved better than this.
