With that said, along comes Bethesda Softworks and its parent company ZeniMax. They’re a private company that is known for gigantic hits, Fallout and The Elder Scrolls are two of their biggest franchise titles. They know how to make games and they’re methodical about the process. Years have been spent putting together some of their largest hits including The Elder Scrolls Oblivion and Skyrim. Both titles have garnished over 100+ million sales. The draw of these games is the open world adventuring players can have with them. Gamers can travel off the beaten path of the main story to go explore an ancient world full of swords, magic and really nasty/evil things. Along the way, they can spend a year crafting, creating and customizing their lives within the games. The games have a ba-jillion ways to work and play, so it’s easy to get addicted to that type of gameplay. I think I spent the better part of three months just exploring and discovering things in Skyrim when I reviewed it back in 2011 before I had to break up with it and move on to more reviewing. So, it’s not shocking that Bethesda Softworks and ZeniMax wanted to take that world and translate it into an MMO environment. Keeping the same elements of adventuring intact, they have veered into this ever-expansive gaming formula in hopes of capturing the same audience that came with their single-player experience.
Right now, as it stands, they’ve got a shot of keeping those gamers and possibly expanding and stealing away WoW’s. That’s a bold statement, but I can see it happening.
For the last week or so, I’ve been knee-deep in a beta of their latest creation and first MMO, The Elder Scrolls Online (ESO). The one vital part of this beta participation is that I want to have that same feeling of exploration and side-questing that Skyrim and Oblivion originally brought to the table. I feel that it’s completely vital that you get that storyline hook that the previous Elder Scrolls titles provided and the want and need to explore and test out the vast world. What I’ve found out in the last week is that there is little separation from that stand-alone game when it gets translated to an MMO format, which is a great thing for Bethesda’s chances of carrying their fans from previous titles to this one.
At the beginning of ESO, I was a bit worried about where the story was going to lead and where the cut off point was with story/MMO (at some point you have to break away from the story and begin the gameplay). Thankfully, the story was very much embedded after a somewhat slow start (mostly because of the tutorial built into the beginning). The game starts as your character wakes from a slumber where he/she was basically thrown into a dark world after having your life cut short thanks to a cult sacrificing you. Your character wakes up inside a Daedric world, ruled by a prince named Molag Bal, but the wonder/horror doesn’t last long as you’re immediately thrown into a jailbreak. You go through various caves and caverns, drop some enemies and look to free a blind man named the Prophet, who helps you get back to the world of the living. Once back in said world, you are thrown lands apart from the Prophet and must find your way back to him, so that you can continue the main quest. Of course, you have to go through a series of missions, which are pretty simple at best, to get to the point where you’re taken across the sea to where the Prophet is located.
While I won’t get too much into the story, just know you’re going to save the world (shocker). The process of getting to the Prophet was so mind numbing, and a bit on the boring side, that I was really worried where Bethesda was taking this. Thankfully, once you get used to all the interfaces through these really low-level missions, you get a grasp on how everything works and the game becomes interesting gradually.
Once you make it to the Prophet’s land, discover the overall arc of the storyline, then you truly feel like you’re back in the Tamriel. The landscape at this point becomes bigger and you start doing what you’ve done in Oblivion/Skyrim, as you go out and take care of random monsters to gain levels/items. The customizing begins to take shape in the game, you find your comfort zone with how your character is built and you go searching for new quests to take part in while the main quest is developing. You’re back to spending time customizing your character, keeping up with charged items and second guessing yourself on whether you can take out a powerful enemy or not. One of my favorite parts of this game is how you randomly run into people needing your help or people who are trying to screw you over. The tiny quests through these individuals is what made me fall in love with Oblivion and Skyrim, so it was nice to see that the core of that gameplay still intact with this MMO. Also intact is the ability to craft, so for you folks out there who love doing that (and I’m honestly not one of them) then you’re going to be in love with what ESO delivers in those regards.
Having spent about a week or so playing this game, I can without a doubt tell you that it’s everything people expected it to be. It was so hard to gauge at E3 2013 because it was a bit disjointed in some areas. It felt incomplete at E3 and I had lost a tad bit of hope. I guess in the last 8 months this sucker has really started to take shape. There’s a lot here in one package and it does act like a stand-alone, as well as an MMO. So, you get those side-quests and main quests that you’re familiar with, but it’s nice to know that at any given moment a friend can pop in and help out. That multiplayer aspect was something that people were clamoring for in the Oblivion/Skyrim. It’s a value that fits nicely in a world that begs for it and, more importantly it makes sense within this world. Anyone having doubts about the singe-player and MMO world having issues mixing together then you should put those to rest. It works really well.
With that said, there were some very ‘beta’ bugs about it. For example, there was a mission where an NPC and myself were to take out an enemy, but the enemy never appeared. They literally never showed up. I’m pretty positive that between now and April that this will get cleared up, but it was a bit of a road bump. In the scheme of things, two months out, this sucker really felt complete. There weren’t many major issues with it outside of the one I just mentioned. I never ran into a point where the game crapped out on me or where it didn’t do something that it was supposed to do. It felt pretty solid from the get-go.
As for the visuals, if you have a PC/Mac that can display the game in ‘Ultra-high’ settings then I completely recommend it. It was a beautiful looking game that featured beautiful shading, shadows and models. The environments are much bigger with no pop-up at all when you’re on this graphics setting. This game looked better than the one I saw at E3 this year. It felt better and it felt like an enormous land. What’s scary is that when you look at the map on the HUD, you can see where all the expansion is going to crop up from and wow…this world is pretty damn huge.
If I have to knock the game for anything at this point in time, it would be the boss battles. If you don’t go into the boss battle with a very well thought out plan or the proper leveling for your character, then you’re going to be history really quick. The arc from cronies to boss is so sharp that the game can be frustrating as hell at times. I think that if you go into the game with friends or people you meet online (there weren’t a lot of them at the times I was playing) then you will probably be okay. Just be forewarned that this game doesn’t feel like it was meant for single-players. It is very much a group experience, which is what any good MMO should be. I guess I need more friends.
As far as some other aspects, the game does a good job with character leveling. In the span of 20-30 hours of gameplay, and I was mostly exploring, I achieved level 12. The skills that were opened up to my character at the point were pretty darn powerful and the compliment the typical repetitive enemy killing routine that comes with every MMO out there. Making quick work of baddies over and over again is always a nice thing when you’re playing with the confines of an MMO structure. The weapon variety and equipping was also quite extensive and impressive. You will run down your weapons/armor pretty easily if you suck at this game, so be cautious of that and remember what I said about bosses (PLAN!).
Anyway, I was very sad to have ended my time with The Elder Scrolls Online last night. I wanted to go back and do more, but like the rest of you I will have to wait until April’s launch. If you’re skeptical about this game right now then please put that skepticism away. This is the game you were hoping for and I’m praying that doesn’t change course between now and launch (it’s pretty set in stone, I’m sure).