The Elder Scrolls Online Previews and Video Interview
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VG247 argues that The Elder Scrolls has always been an MMO franchise at heart:
It was, more or less, exactly the same as my typical Elder Scrolls solo experience. Character creation was pretty familiar, if simpler, but the typical races were represented. I went around doing a bunch of quests that didn't have much to do with one another, and I wandered around looking at stuff while random assassins tried to murder me. I talked to some people, and my dialogue options were usually pretty meaningless. It's all what I would have expected from any other internally developed Bethesda RPG.
One might read what I just wrote and interpret that as me asserting that TESO is some sort of grand evolution of the MMO, but that is not at all what I am trying to say. Rather, what playing TESO made me realize is that all those other Elder Scrolls titles were actually MMO-style games that you had to play alone. That's not an insult, because those games have avoided some of the key annoyances about MMOs, but I'll get to that in a minute.
To be fair, TESO is not exactly identical to Skyrim. There is an action bar, for one, though there is no cursor as mouse look is locked on. Yeah, you'll hit the left mouse button a lot to attack, but then you'll throw some abilities, which you buy with skill points that you gain from leveling up, in from time to time with the 1-5 keys. And, like, uh, I'm sure there were other things that were different. No, this feels like Elder Scrolls.
The Escapist is fairly positive:
As soon as I strode into the town of Daggerfall, a dog bounded up to me. I entered a dialogue with the puppy - like you do - and I was led to the body of a young Breton. His supposed killer attacked me immediately, and I got my first taste at combat. The right and left mouse buttons feel a bit odd to constantly press when fighting, at least for me, but I soon figured out a nifty combo of trapping the Bloodthorn Assassin in his place and peppering him with lighting and basic staff attacks.
It turns out the dead guy left a shopping list, and I had to go around to the shopkeepers in town to see what I could find out. Talking to the shopkeepers not only introduced more of the excellent voice-acting for every NPC - on par or better than Skyrim I'd say - but it also let me loot all of the barrels and crates in the market. I was disappointed the guards didn't attack me, my loot OCD will get the better of me in this game, but I gathered a bunch of raw materials like grain and fruit.
Hey, that's a cookfire. What happens if I ... Yep, hello crafting system. From what I had in my inventory, I brewed an ale and a wine - potions which would restore my health or mana over a brief time. You can also "deconstruct" anything you craft to get some raw resources back and possibly discover new recipes, but I didn't learn anything new when I deconstructed my beer. Pity.
GameInformer:
The demo popped me a little past the starter area of the game, right into the heart of Daggerfall, though the game's setting several thousand years before the other Elder Scrolls games means that the city looks decidedly different than it does in later years (in Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall). My character begins at level six, so I immediately hop in and explore the game's level-up and ability screen. Here, I'm greeted by abilities spread across three distinct trees. For my dragon knight, I can select abilities in the Ardent Flame, Draconic Power, and Earthen Heart groups -- each of which has multiple abilities that can be leveled up. Powers map to a small action bar at the bottom of the screen, keeping your options limited to a small number of five or six special moves in each battle, in addition to a standard left-mouse click melee swing. As I move through the city and begin a series of quests, enemy combatants regularly arrive, and help show off the fast-moving combat. Battles are highly focused on movement, blocking, positioning, and smart power use; the whole affair feels more action-oriented than most MMOs.
During my hour of playtime, I make my way through a number of small sidequests, as well as an extensive mission chain that sees my character thwarting an assassination attempt on the local king. Questing feels more directed and story-driven than many MMOs, and less focused on "kill this many foes" or "collect this many objects." Even so, in the balance between traditional MMOs and the familiar Elder Scrolls games, the game undeniably feels closer to an MMO than its single-player RPG forebears.
Finally, Machinima has a video interview with ZeniMax Online's Paul Sage. Unfortuantely, despite the video being titled "Gameplay Demo" it doesn't seem to include any new gameplay footage, which was extremely disappointing for me.
