Skyrim lead designer hopes Sentinel will finally solve The Elder Scrolls' ladder problem

For such a simple, straightforward real-world object, ladders have been the bane of game developers' existence since the early days of the industry . And Bethesda's The Elder Scrolls Series is certainly no stranger to that struggle.

"It seems simple, it seems stupid."

For such a simple, straightforward real-world object, ladders have been the bane of game developers' existence since the early days of the industry. And Bethesda's The Elder Scrolls Series is certainly no stranger to that struggle.

While we may be years away from the release of The Elder Scrolls 6: Sentinel, the recent title reveal reignited conversations about what longtime fans hope to see from it. That includes former Bethesda developers, such as Skyrim lead designer and Bethesda veteran Bruce Nesmith, who picked ladders as one thing he hopes Sentinel actually figures out.

If you're unfamiliar, ladders in Skyrim work in a weird way. You don't animatedly climb up and down them, but rather the character simply teleports from one end to the other. Speaking to The Examined Game (via GamesRadar+), Nesmith said that Skyrim's approach "really limits the art team in terms of how you can do multi-layer [levels]".

"It seems simple, it seems stupid, but you don't climb up and down ladders," said Nesmith. "All the ladders in Skyrim, you click on the ladder, poof, you're at the top or you have to climb a stair.

"But to do ladders, you have to deal with a whole host of questions which our programmers very legitimately put in front of us and said, 'You give me answers to these, I'll tell you how much programming time it's going to take to make them.' And you know, that caused problems right there."

Nesmith then pointed out the hidden complexity of creating functioning ladders in games, and the scenarios developers have to anticipate and account for, especially in a game as dynamic as an Elder Scrolls title.

"So, I'm halfway up a ladder, and [an] NPC decides to climb down it. What happens?" Nesmith posited. "The NPC has to have AI that will adjust for that. Does the player go through the NPC? Is he blocked by the NPC? Does the NPC stay on the ladder? Does the NPC go back up and know to wait and then come back down?

"And I'm just scratching the surface of some of the problems they brought up. So, it seems simple, and other games have climbing ladders, but we chose to put our efforts into other things to make them better rather than deal with that. So, I'd like to see Bethesda finally come around to making ladders a reality where you're actually climbing them and make the world feel a little more immersive."

While we know very little about Sentinel right now - much less how it's going to solve the ladder problem -that hasn't stopped fans from speculating about a number of topics, including what they believe is going to be a split / alternate timeline setup.

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