Former Skyrim Lead Designer Wants Elder Scrolls 6 to Solve Ladders and Mounts

When fans imagine the next chapter of The Elder Scrolls, the wish list often reaches toward vast ideas: larger regions, seafaring, deeper faction systems, more reactive quests, and new ways to explore a fantasy world. Bruce Nesmith, a lead designer on The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, has highlighted two much smaller-sounding priorities for the next game, commonly referred to as The Elder Scrolls 6: Sentinel: properly usable ladders and more capable mounts.

They may not be the flashiest requests, but Nesmith's reasoning gets at a major challenge of building a huge open-world role-playing game. A feature can sound simple from the player's side of the screen, yet have consequences for animation, collision, artificial intelligence, combat, level design, quest scripting, testing, and performance. In his view, improving ladders and horses could do more than add convenience. It could alter the kinds of places developers are able to build and make the world feel more convincing to inhabit.

A small traversal feature with large design consequences

Speaking with The Examined Game, Nesmith described ladders as a "very strange" item near the top of his personal hopes for the next Elder Scrolls. The oddity comes from how minor the feature can appear. In many games, climbing a ladder is an expected action, barely worth thinking about. In Skyrim, however, ladders generally serve as shortcuts or transitions rather than objects the player physically climbs.

Players commonly activate a ladder and appear at its destination, or they reach elevated areas through staircases, slopes, ramps, and other bespoke routes. That approach avoids a web of technical and gameplay questions, but it also places limits on environmental construction. Nesmith said the absence of climbable ladders can restrict artists designing multi-level spaces.

For useful background on this topic, read Eiji Aonuma Calls Switch 2's Water Temple the Best Version Yet.

That restriction matters especially in a game built around discovery. Tall guard towers, dense harbor districts, interior balconies, mine shafts, wooden watchposts, ruined keeps, and layered city buildings all become easier to picture as believable locations when vertical routes can be used naturally. Designers can always create alternate paths, of course, but each workaround has an effect on the shape, scale, and flow of a location.

A reliable ladder system is therefore not just about moving upward. It is potentially a tool that gives artists and level designers more freedom to construct vertical spaces without needing every ascent and descent to become a custom staircase, loading-like interaction, or carefully controlled animation transition.

Why ladders are not actually simple

Nesmith also explained why Skyrim handled ladders the way it did. During development, programmers raised legitimate implementation questions before committing substantial time to the system. Once those questions are considered, a straightforward player action becomes much more complicated.

The basic example is easy to understand: what happens when an NPC is already halfway down a ladder while the player begins climbing from below? The game needs consistent rules. Can the player pass through the NPC? Is the player blocked? Does the NPC stop? Should that character climb back up, wait at the top or bottom, then resume their original task? How does the NPC know where to go, and what happens if combat begins during the encounter?

Those questions are only a starting point. A fully supported ladder feature can need to account for different character sizes, animation states, companions, enemies, followers, physics objects, pathfinding, stealth detection, scripted scenes, combat targeting, mounted characters, and save-state reliability. It must also handle the countless awkward situations players may deliberately create in an open-world sandbox.

In a tightly guided action game, developers can constrain the circumstances around a ladder. They can prevent enemy encounters nearby, disallow certain actions, place a ladder only in hand-built traversal sequences, or ensure that a character uses it in one predictable direction. The Elder Scrolls games have a different problem. Their systems are intended to support wandering, fighting, stealing, questing, summoning, recruiting followers, and experimenting in places that may be visited in an unexpected order.

Nesmith's point was not that ladders are impossible. Plenty of games include them. Rather, Bethesda's team had to decide where to allocate time and resources, and it chose to put that effort into other areas. For a project as enormous as Skyrim, every feature carries an opportunity cost. Supporting ladders across the game means less time for something else, whether that is content, polish, systems work, or bug fixing.

Immersion and better use of vertical space

Even with those difficulties acknowledged, Nesmith believes ladders could make the next game's world feel more immersive. The value is partly visual and partly practical. When a player sees a lookout platform, an attic, a ship's deck, or a cliffside structure, the ability to use an obvious ladder reinforces the impression that the space follows understandable physical rules.

More importantly, improved vertical traversal could create opportunities for exploration and encounter design. A bandit camp could have meaningful upper and lower routes. An enemy archer's position could be reached through a ladder rather than a winding staircase. A building could have rooftops connected by short climbs. A dungeon may present additional tactical choices if height is not limited to ramps and stairs.

None of that requires ladders to become a major combat mechanic. In fact, a sensible implementation may intentionally limit combat interactions while climbing to avoid turning every ascent into an unpredictable animation and AI problem. But even a restricted system, if it works consistently, could have a noticeable influence on the game's spaces.

"It seems simple," Nesmith said of ladders, while stressing that the development team faced many deeper problems than players might initially see.

The distinction is important for expectations around The Elder Scrolls 6. A modern sequel does not automatically need every feature seen elsewhere. Its systems need to work together with the particular freedoms and complications that define Bethesda-style open worlds. Still, Nesmith's comments make a strong case that ladders are more than a cosmetic omission; they are a design choice with wider effects.

Mounts remain another difficult frontier

Nesmith's second request is a better implementation of mounts, an area he acknowledged has long been a common complaint among Skyrim players. Horses let the player travel through the game's expansive wilderness, including terrain that can be awkward to cross on foot. Yet their interactions are limited. In Nesmith's assessment, players can ride a horse in Skyrim, but there should be more possibilities than that.

He specifically raised the prospect of fighting while mounted or having a horse fight alongside its rider. Those additions would make mounts feel more like active companions than transport tools that are abandoned whenever danger appears. They could also make travel encounters feel different, particularly in the open country between settlements, caves, and quest locations.

But, just as with ladders, Nesmith emphasized that mounts are tricky. Mounted combat changes fundamental assumptions about speed, reach, enemy behavior, camera control, terrain navigation, animation, hit detection, and balance. Enemies must know whether to target the rider or animal. The horse must behave credibly around obstacles and uneven ground. The game has to determine how followers, hostile NPCs, spells, projectiles, and large creatures interact with a character moving at mounted speed.

There are further role-playing considerations. If mounted combat is powerful, it could trivialize encounters intended for a player on foot. If it is too weak or cumbersome, players may ignore it. If mounts can participate in battles, developers must decide how vulnerable they are, whether they can be healed, whether they can flee, and how permanent losses should be handled. Each decision has consequences for both player attachment and the broader game economy.

The appeal of practical improvements

Nesmith's hopes are a useful reminder that a sequel's most meaningful advances do not always come from a headline-grabbing new feature. Better ladders could expand vertical level design and reduce moments where the world feels artificially constrained. Better mounts could make journeys and wilderness encounters more dynamic. Neither idea sounds as spectacular as a new continent-wide system, but both could affect hundreds of small moments over the course of a long role-playing adventure.

For now, the comments should be understood as Nesmith's personal wishes rather than confirmation of features planned for The Elder Scrolls 6: Sentinel. He explained the compromises involved in Skyrim's design and outlined what he would like to see improved, not what has been officially announced for the upcoming game.

That uncertainty will not stop fans from debating the possibilities. The next Elder Scrolls carries enormous expectations, and every returning system will be judged against years of player habits, mods, and changing RPG standards. If its developers do choose to tackle ladders and expand what mounts can do, they will be addressing two deceptively complicated parts of open-world design--features that may make a large difference precisely because players use them so often.