The Elder Scrolls -

[Mnutu]

I'm pretty sure when you roll the dice in a tabletop game time doesn't stop, because if it did people who play TTRPGs would be much less likely to be virgins.

What

 

[scathefire]

I wonder how Bethesda is going to un-fuck themselves from the corner they wrote themselves into with the Civil War plotline. They already did an ass-pull with the Warp in the West to explain Daggerfall's 5(?) mutually exclusive endings all canon. The Red Mountain exploded shortly after Morrowind, making none of that shit matter. Skyrim didn't need a plot device to explain away things that happened in Oblivion, because you had no choices that mattered in that game.

Assuming that they don't just ignore it, I think they're going to do a re-do of Red Mountain and have Snow Throat explode because you killed its heart, Paarthunax. It would also move along the storyline going on in the background, the Towers steadily getting destroyed/inert.

Personally I wouldn't mind if they picked a canon outcome for the war, but I know tons of people would be butthurt either way and based on what Besthesda has done in the past regarding differing player choice, it's always like "buhhh we don't know what happened" or something. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, it's just that in this instance they've written themselves into a massive corner as you've said, and there's no easy way to leave it open-ended. Unless TES:VI ends up being a prequel, that could be one way to avoid answering the question of who won.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

Personally I wouldn't mind if they picked a canon outcome for the war, but I know tons of people would be butthurt either way and based on what Besthesda has done in the past regarding differing player choice, it's always like "buhhh we don't know what happened" or something. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, it's just that in this instance they've written themselves into a massive corner as you've said, and there's no easy way to leave it open-ended. Unless TES:VI ends up being a prequel, that could be one way to avoid answering the question of who won.

They can just have TES:VI take place during the events of Skyrim, on another country, like Hammerfell or Alinor. It could be concurrent with what's going on at the time, and you can hear something about Alduin or Ulfric doing something from some NPCs while another country has their own story in the meantime.

Or pull a KOTOR 2 and have the player decide who won the Skyrim Civil War or the Dawnguard vs. Volkihar vampires war through dialogue with NPCs. Just like how you can determine what sex Revan is and which side Revan chose in KOTOR 1 through an early dialogue with a character in KOTOR 2. Then such choices would have some minor impacts in gaming, like say, you can get Ulfric Stormcloak or General Tullius to help you later in the game or something, like how choosing whether or not Revan went light or dark can determine who leads the Republic forces against Darth Nihilus in the endgame of KOTOR 2.