The Elder Scrolls has already established a comfy presence as one of the best single-player RPGs around, and the recent, huge success of Skyrim has only further solidified this. But, when it comes to online role playing, Bethesda’s series is the newbie. However, despite its green-tinged skill set for MMORPG action, The Elder Scrolls Online may well take the competition by storm.
In this mini-documentary, the dev team talk about some of the basic building blocks of the new game in the series, which will be set some 1000 years before events seen in Skyrim.
The Elder Scrolls Online will not be limited to a single province of the game world of Tamriel, but will instead take in the whole map. Players will be able to revisit locations from Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim, complete with each game’s respective art and design style, and will also visit new areas not seen since the classic pre-Morrowind instalments.
The actual engine running the proceedings will also be impressive, and although some downscaling from Skyrim-levels of eye-candy will be needed, this is an MMO after all, it’s looking very impressive. Visually it’s a definite looker, and on the technical side, it will be able to handle hundreds of characters on screen at any one time, which will be needed for hectic PvP battles.
The server system, undoubtedly a major bugbear with any new MMO, will utilise Bethesda’s ‘Megaserver’ tech, which will do away with separate ‘shards’ and replace it with a single, massive server, so finding friends will be easy.
As for game mechanics, this will be pure Elder Scrolls. Players will have full, real-time control over movement and combat, including blocking, power moves, ranged attacks and so on.
Characters will be chosen from a selection of races and classes, but this is just a starting point, and these won’t be tied to specific skills or items. So, in true Elder Scrolls fashion, you can pick a magic user, but, should you with to, adorn them with heavy armour and a hammer, or you could create a beast of a warrior who likes to use daggers and bows. It’s up to you. Likewise, skills, or perks as they’ll be known, can drastically affect your play style, and this will enable unique and tailored avatars.
PvP will be a major component too, alongside the more traditional co-op questing, and here it won’t be solely the domain of veteran players. Instead Bethesda is creating it to be accessible to any players, even low level, and fights will be large scale, epic wars complete with siege engines, as opposing factions contest the control of the world’s capital province, Cyrodiil.
The video doesn’t delve into too much depth at this point, but more details will follow. What is clear, is that Bethesda isn’t holding back on its assault of the MMO genre. Have a look for yourself.
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