S
ix years after we put Skyrim back in its box and
began adventuring in the online Tamriel, a return
to Solitude should feel like coming home. Yet at
first we find Greymoor underwhelming. Here and there,
though not quite game-breaking, are short-cuts and
rough edges: near-broken missions such as a library
where pulling an emote to face-plant a bookshelf is the
only way to find a secret passage; identical, bald
vampire victims; shorter multiplayer dungeons. Even
the region itself is smaller than previous updates.
While 2018’s Summerset felt fresh and breezy, with
a fairytale colour palette and a sense of mischief that
made it seem like one long summer Saturday night,
Greymoor’s caverns and dour settlements feel like
a wet, wintry Wednesday. It feels unloved – rushed,
even. With The Elder Scrolls VI on the horizon we worry
that, like the abandoned machines in Blackreach’s
Dwemer ruins, ESO might be running out of steam.
That is, until we are reminded of why we, and 15
million others, keep coming back: ESO’s superior
storytelling. The starting point may have been to let
Skyrim fans have at it in PvP battles or loot together in
dungeons, but the majority of the 1,200 or so hours
we’ve sunk into it have been spent in solo enterprise.
ESO has always served up irresistible characters and
bold ideas within even the smallest encounters.
Greymoor’s central story of a rising vampiric evil is
strong, but ESO is great at providing sidequests that
spin out into surprising adventures. We find an ice-
bound ship whose crew members are being picked off
by a monster in the frozen mists, break the curse of
a woman doomed by love, rescue a prisoner from an
imposing subterranean keep, chase a phantasm called
The Pale Man and join our old pal Rigurt The Brash in
some inept Nord diplomacy – all funny and engaging
quests of the kind to be found throughout ESO’s
Tamriel. Unlike most MMOs, the game is not bound
by the quality of its PvP combat; it has never asked us
to sink our time into battle royales (or even play
sociably, if we don’t want to), quietly building a deep
singleplayer experience which the game’s online nature
would allow to constantly evolve.
This world-building has strengthened the shared
experience of multiplayer too, and the game’s
community – all those people running around us as we
quest onwards, alone and unbowed – is still thriving as
a result. The Elder Scrolls VI may eventually spell the
end for ESO, if players migrate en masse, but while it
could have been just a multiplayer stop-gap between
full series entries, Bethesda should be looking very
closely at what Zenimax has achieved with ESO. You
simply can’t put all that back in its box. QDeveloper ZeniMax Online Studios Publisher Bethesda Softworks Format PC, PS4, Xbox One Release 2014The Elder Scrolls Online
A progress report on the games we just can’t quit
THE LONG GAME