The Elder Scrolls Online
The Elder Scrolls is arguably my favourite series in all of gaming - I'll do a retrospective on that someday. Morrowind was an eye-opener for me. It was the first game that offered me a glimpse of what I had dreamed about - a wide open world where you could go anywhere, do anything, and were given the freedom to approach your quests in various ways. Today, we take our open world RPGs for granted, but every one of them still follows basically the same general blueprint as Morrowind. I have never been a fan of MMOs. I have tried a few, and did spend some time on World of Warcraft, but I'm definitely more of a singleplayer gamer. When The Elder Scrolls Online as first announced, it seemed clear that their focus was competing squarely in the MMO market. Much delayed, it released to a mixed reception. I gave it a pass. Over the years, the game evolved into something more singleplayer friendly with various updates and overhauls. I finally got back in after the Morrowind expansion released.
I skipped the legacy main quest, and jumped straight into the new Morrowind content. That's where nostalgia hit me, from the OG Morrowind days. Exploring through TESO's Vvardenfell was goosebump inducing. I was finally hooked, and determined to give TESO a run. The Morrowind expansion was great, with a surprisingly powerful narrative. It was completely true to the lore, and felt like a must-play for any fan of the series. Most importantly, I played it pretty much like a singleplayer game. Of course, being a multiplayer game, there were definitely limitations to the complexity of quests, and choices and consequences were basic. But it was a great time to get back to Tamriel.
From there, I checked out the main quest. Ah, now I see why it wasn't received quite so well. I played through it, and it was pretty good, but didn't hold a candle to the mainline series, or even the Morrowind expansion. But there was more, a lot more to the world Zenimax Online Studios had built.
They have included the entire continent of Tamriel, a crazy ambition - almost a fool-hardy one. When they first started, they probably wanted to recreate all of it, but at launch, only a selection was present, with mostly unvisitable regions. Obviously, each region is going to be more of a glimpse, compared to the richly detailed worlds I'd expect of the mainline series. For example, there are some places from Oblivion and Skyrim in the game, but they just aren't as detailed or expansive. That's fine. Instead, what the game offers you is a truly massive world to get lost in. Not all areas of Tamriel are developed, but over the years, they have been filling in the blanks, bit by bit. Today, roughly between half to 2/3rds of Tamriel is built in TESO, which is remarkable.
Even before the expansions, each region has their own sub-quest, with the larger overarching alliances featuring broad narratives. I can't say these narratives and quests were special, but gallivanting across vast swathes of Tamriel certainly was. Many of these regions were referenced in prior games, and finally, you get to explore them. There's a huge diversity in the continent of Tamriel, and the overall feeling of an entire world apart from our own is quite unlike anything else in gaming.
You'll find many of the mechanics and skills from Skyrim or Oblivion, but things have been streamlined quite a bit. Instead, there are a whole new slew of multiplayer options. I won't go into them, and leave this be more of a singleplayer review, but there's enough content here to keep you going for a long time. Today, 10 million players are active on TESO, and it shows.
While Morrowind was a great return to form, the game finally found its identity with Summerset. Resting on the strengths of the lore and past games, the general world design of TESO is pretty good. There are incredible locations, but some of the art and design don't quite live up to expectations. But Summerset knocked it out the park. The island of Summerset looks absolutely sublime, and exactly what I had imagined. Of course, the graphics looked dated when the Summerset expansion released in 2018, and even moreso today. The Summerset expansion also defined how the game is going to evolve now. Each year, there's going to be an overarching narrative, that'll play out over 3-4 DLCs over the year, and one major expansion in the summer. Even more interestingly, all of these different expansions will be linked, with returning characters, revisit and expansion of older narratives, etc. This is a great way to keep singleplayer fans of the series engaged with an ongoing narrative, while we continue the long, long wait for The Elder Scrolls VI.
The Elsweyr expansion from last year wasn't quite as great as Summerset, but continued the top notch narrative and world building we've now come to expect from TESO. This year, TESO revisits Skyrim, in a rather unexpected way. While I wanted to see some of the unseen regions filled in, a return to Western Skyrim with a completely different perspective, and in a different era, certainly sounds appetizing.
There's a lot that can be written about TESO. Yes, it looks and feels dated. Yes, it isn't quite as good as the mainline series games. Yes, it relies too heavily on the main series' lore, and some of the locations don't seem that much different for a game set two millennia before. But it has find its own strong identity, and become a regular, must play for any fan of The Elder Scrolls series. Even if you're a singleplayer-only gamer, you must give it a try. I'd suggest skipping the main quests, and starting with the Morrowind expansion instead. Summerset, Elsweyr, and their various related DLCs are must plays. You also have incredibly fun unrelated DLCs - Clockwork City in Sotha Sil's realm is particularly fascinating. To date, I have put in 270 hours into The Elder Scrolls Online, and remains my most played game. I'd imagine there's only a couple of years left before it starts to feel too old and dated, at which point we'll get The Elder Scrolls VI. Still, I can't wait to see where it goes next.
As an aside, it's rather interesting how Fallout 76 is very much following in TESO's footsteps. They started off wanting to create a multiplayer experience, but launched with a very divisive response (much more so than TESO). Over time, it's definitely moving towards a game more focussed on singleplayer, and telling a larger story over the years.