The Elder Scrolls Online Interview
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Put lightly, the Elder Scrolls series has never been known for intense or visually interesting combat,but there's a gritty realism about its simple slashes that's well suited to gamepad-driven gameplay. The first time I played, I remember how much it "felt" like Elder Scrolls in this regard -- the use of left and right mouse buttons to block and attack, the optional near-absence of a UI -- and I recall wanting to hook a gamepad up so I could see how well it performed. That feeling extended to the progression of the combat, which is limited to a mere six button slots on both PC and consoles. As Firor explained, "As you use abilities (class, weapon, guild, other), they get better, and eventually you can morph them into more powerful versions of the base ability," he said. "There's plenty of choice -- and remember, your base attack, heavy attack, and block abilities are performed with the mouse buttons or gamepad, not with the ability bar." Standard Elder Scrolls gameplay, then -- familiar to both PC and console players.
And therein lies a possible key to the Elder Scrolls' future success: In Firor's words, "we're an Elder Scrolls game, first and foremost, and if we deliver the Elder Scrolls experience that gamers are looking for, we'll be fine." That means we're not looking at something so drastic as pulling characters from a real-time strategy game and dumping them into an MMO (as in Warcraft), but rather an attempt to make "Skyrim with friends."
"We definitely wanted to make the game very accessible to Elder Scrolls (RPG) players, and make sure that ESO doesn't hit you with too much jargon, interface, or options in the beginning,) Firor continued. (Experienced MMO players will find most of the gameplay they are used to, but it is definitely filtered through an Elder Scrolls-type interface and experience. And yes, the more that the game feels like Elder Scrolls, the better we've reached our goal." So long as ZeniMax keeps that simple and lofty goal in mind, the concept has tremendous potential; indeed, it might be doing itself a disservice by marketing itself as an MMORPG. It helps, too, that ESO takes up the current drive toward single-player play in MMORPGs with zeal, leaving most quests outside of instances perfectly soloable.
But let's be honest. There's not much point in playing an MMORPG if you're going to go it alone; much of the appeal of the genre lies in the way it lets you tackle a challenge with a group of other people, and with better results than what you find in most office meetings. This will be the biggest hurdle for ZeniMax, particularly since grouping in console MMORPGs involves unwieldy alternations between gamepads and keyboards or (at worst) enduring immersion-breaking epithets in voice chat. Firor himself admits that ZeniMax is still searching for a solution. "We're in the middle of designing these [social] systems now," he said. "We'll have much more detail on them in the coming months."
