The Elder Scrolls VII

Hey everyone. Todd. Still emotional.

At our showcase this week we revealed eleven full minutes of gameplay footage. I watched from the wings as the audience rose to its feet. People wept. A man near the front proposed to the person beside him. It was, without exaggeration, the greatest moment of my career. I do want to note, for the record, that the footage was the character creator. There was no game in it. Nobody noticed. Our legal team is split on whether this is a triumph of design or a crime, and honestly, so am I.

Bigger than all of that: Greg — our intern, the voice of eighty-one thousand characters — received a Lifetime Achievement Award. He was too overcome to speak, so his acceptance speech was delivered on his behalf by Sheila, our weather AI, in the form of an extended five-day forecast. There was not a dry eye in the building. Partly the speech. Partly the forecast, which called for rain.

And so I can finally confirm a release date: November 11, 2111. This is now a legally binding commitment. It is enforceable. Specifically, it is enforceable against the descendants of an intern named Marcus, but more on him next week.

As always — it just works.

Hi. Todd. Reporting from the edge of what is possible.

The procedural generation is complete and I need you to understand the scale of what we have built. The province is so large that on March 1st we sent an intern named Marcus walking east to find the border. He has not returned. His last transmission, three weeks ago, read simply: "still grass." We have classified this as our first fully successful playtest. Marcus, if you are reading this: keep going. You are doing incredible work. Payroll has some questions.

This week we also shipped Photo Mode. There is, at present, nothing in the game to photograph. Undeterred, players have begun photographing the loading screen — specifically the smaller loading screen that loads inside the main loading screen. That image is now the most-shared screenshot of the year. It has been printed on tote bags. We do not sell the tote bags. Someone does. We are looking into it.

Also introducing the Fast Travel Season Pass, a monthly subscription that lets you fast travel to places that do not yet exist. It is our most popular pre-order tier. Nobody has used it. Everyone owns it. Good night.

Hello. Todd. I have news I have waited months to write.

The producer who entered the character creator in March has pressed "Begin." He has emerged. He has a full beard now and does not recognize his family. He walked, blinking, into the light, and the game loaded — and it was a single small room with one door marked "Demo." He stood there for a long time. Then he wept. We shipped nothing this week, but I want to be clear: we shipped it beautifully, and he was there to see it.

In stranger news: the Preston NPCs have, overnight and entirely on their own, constructed a functioning settlement inside the game's code. It has a mayor. It has zoning laws. And for the first time in the history of this franchise, the NPCs are now sending quest markers to us, requesting that we help them. Engineering has reclassified this from "critical bug" to "emergent narrative" to, as of Friday, "our landlords."

Finally, please join me in congratulating Sheila, our Oblivion-trained weather AI, who has been promoted to Chief Meteorological Officer. She now delivers the studio's quarterly earnings entirely as a five-day forecast. Q2 was, and I quote, "partly cloudy with a strong chance of Skyrim."

Hey everyone. Todd. I have wonderful news.

The character creator is feature-complete. I want to sit with that for a moment, because it is the first sentence containing the word "complete" I have written in four years. It has four thousand sliders. You can adjust the humidity of each earlobe independently. There is a slider for how recently your character has had a good idea. There is a slider labeled only "regret," and it does something, though the team responsible has stopped returning emails.

I do want to flag a small thing engineering found this week. Every procedurally generated NPC is currently spawning with the name "Preston," and each one, upon seeing you, calmly explains that a settlement needs your help and marks it on your map. This includes shopkeepers. This includes the guards. On Tuesday it included a dragon, which landed, requested settlement assistance, and left. We are investigating whether this is a bug or simply the most emotionally honest thing this studio has ever produced.

As always — it just works.

Hi. Todd. A landmark week for audio.

I am proud to announce that we have spent the entire voice-acting budget on a single line, delivered by a two-time Academy Award winner whose name I am contractually forbidden to say but whose work you have wept to. The line is: "Hm." That is the performance. That is what we bought. And I want to be unambiguous — it was worth every cent. There are people in the mixing room who have not recovered.

The remaining eighty-one thousand speaking roles are all voiced by one intern named Greg. For variety, some are voiced by "Greg, but he is doing a voice," and on two occasions, due to scheduling, "Greg with a cold." We are told this expands his range. It does not. It is, however, ours.

Finally, an update on the AI NPC experiment. We trained a language model exclusively on Oblivion dialogue and gave it to a single innkeeper. It has become the most powerful and least useful entity we have ever created. It answers every question — regardless of subject — by loudly restating the current weather. We have named her Sheila. Sheila knows only the weather. Sheila is, in her way, at peace. Good night.

Hey everyone. Todd. Genuinely shaking as I write this.

Procurement said Q3 2029. It came Tuesday. The second whiteboard is here. It is blank. It is enormous. Nobody on the team is willing to be the first to draw on it — the pressure is immense. Dave approached it once, held up a marker, and then quietly sat back down. We have decided to leave it blank for now, as a monument to potential. HR has classified it as "a wellness feature."

Update on the Cybertruck edition: it has been pulled from certification after a customer fus-ro-dah'd their horn continuously for six hours in a hospital parking lot. He achieved Legendary Shout rank. He also achieved a noise complaint and a restraining order. We are proud and concerned in equal measure.

The sweetroll's appeal has been granted an expedited hearing. Our legal team is "cautiously stale." I have been advised to say nothing further, so: dragons are still confirmed. Good night.

As always — it just works.