The Elder Scrolls Online Preview

The Elder Scrolls Online has come a long, long way in the short period of time we have known about it. Many outlets, including IGN and Eurogamer had cited that it originally lacked the definitive Elder Scrolls feeling. Its exploration, combat, and everything in between were pure MMO just in a Tamriel coating.

Zenimax Online has gone to great lengths to tune its online role-playing game towards the Elder Scrolls hardcore. It’s implemented a first-person option and is starting to feel like the game we were expecting/hoping for. In fact everything that makes an ES game remains; brawling with local carnivorous wildlife, stumbling upon bandit camps and vampires in the darkest of Cliffside caves.

EOS does not waste any time with simple fetch quests or arbitrary conversations to fill the vast world. Instead it works through discover, adventure and investigation.

Combat, in particular, has improved dramatically – not just from the MMO early build being played – but also from the single player adventures. Where Oblivion and Skyrim lacked a certain ferocity and physicality, this new design gives each swing and hit a definitive weighting. It has also improved the ragdoll physics of the Skyrim world with hammer crunches smashing characters to the floor instead of sending them 20 foot backwards.

Another area changed is in the subtle interface, which has always been present in the franchise, that now feels more fluid. The clunky map from older demos has been eradicated in favour of a UI almost identical to Skyrim – complete with a compass bar for those who care. The map has been used as a basis for the more focused quest styles for this online outing. Objectives are less open-ended than their single player counterparts giving the gamer some direction. This isn’t to say the ESO lacks any sort of aimless wonder - just like Skyrim and Oblivion - you can go wherever you want, whenever you want.

 Adventurer camps are fewer and far between, but when you do find them they’ll be more substantial. Notes and books are frequent, mysterious fish that you can’t catch without the right bait, missing siblings and authoritarian issues are among the quests you can expect to complete. Mundane quests are dead; almost everything in ESO has some sort of branching path or multiple completion options. Everything in ESO has a story woven through it, comparable to, and arguably done better than, Star Wars: The Old Republic.

ESO is obviously an MMO at its heart but it manages to make its story content approachable when playing along and only encourages multiplayer team-ups in later levels. Elder Scrolls games and MMOs are equality as overwhelming in their scope, wealth of options and library of information to take on.

ESO seems like the perfect platform to continue the franchise.