After a brief muck about in its mad jungles and autumnal estates, I’m ready to go whole hog
Yesterday, if you can believe it, marked the tenth anniversary ofThe Elder Scrolls Online. That’s a whole decade of tromping across Tamriel with your mates, and a whole decade in which I’ve watched tentatively from the sidelines, thinking about dipping my toes into theMMOpool, but never quite building up the courage (or lining the walls of my bank account) to fully take the plunge. I’ve heard all thehorror storiesabout starting a new MMO from other members of the RPS Treehouse - particularly when it comes to thelore-laden shackles of World Of Warcraftand thebloated MMO-service-hybrid Destiny- and quite honestly, it’s enough to put me off them all entirely. But The Elder Scrolls Online might just be the exception to the rule.
I spent a portion of the game’s tenth birthday yesterday playing Gold Road, its upcoming eighth Chapter expansion. In it, you’re whisked over to the West Weald, an autumnal, sun-dappled region whose main city hub, Skingrad, will no doubt feel familiar to seasonedOblivionites. Seemingly overnight, a strange jungle has sprung up on the city’s outskirts, uprooting the nearby villages of the neighbouring high elves and causing havoc as strange beasts pour out of its curling root beds. There are more mysteries to unravel here, too, including the emergence of the new Daedric Prince, Ithelia (revealed at the end of last year’sNecrom Chapter), and much more besides - too much to realistically take in during a 90-minute preview session, or for this MMO newbie to fully comprehend the significance of. But there’s something about Gold Road and its gnarled-up jungles, strange cults and fantastical beasts that’s definitely made me want to make a return journey here when it launches on PC on June 3rd.
Still, the Necrom preamble aside, Gold Road makes a very amenable first impression. Developers Zenimax Online Studios definitely haven’t mucked about with the titular colour palette here, as on the ascent up from the portal, you’re greeted with an almost perpetual sunset falling over fields of rich vineyards (with nary asingle low-poly grape in sight- don’t worry, I checked), colourful autumnal trees and large, stately manor houses. It’s a place that screams, ‘Yes, nothing bad could possibly happen here, no sirree.’ That is, until a woman gets spat out of another portal in front of you that’s lined with black, oozing tentacles and oval-goat-like green eyes bubbling around its edges. Her name is Valaria Calidius, and she’s here to tell you about the Lucent Citadel, the game’s latest 12-player trial activity. She makes it sound all very urgent and important, but given the limited time I have, I bid her and her no-thank-you-eyeball-portal good day and about face. I want to get as far away from those tentacles as possible, and as I quickly scan my navigation bar in search of an emergency waypoint, it turns out I missed another important quest giver back down the hill.
There are other scraps of parchment lying conspicuously in the middle of the road, as well as other NPCs milling about in camps and crossroads who are also just itching to add more things to my to-do list, but I resist the urge to start collecting questlines I know I’ll never even start or finish. There’s 30+ hours of stuff here to dig into, and I only have 90-odd minutes to make a dent on this, so I make a beeline for the wise lady who’ll set me down the critical path and most importantly, give me a reason to visit the West Weald’s mad jungle forests. There are two other areas I need investigate as part of that main story quest, she tells me, but I can see the coiling branches of Ostumir rising up on the horizon, and they’re simply too enticing to ignore. With a new objective in hand, I set off, and almost immediately find myself in a scorched and barren beige wasteland, dead villagers slumped by rotten doorframes, with bandits and vultures picking through the ruins. It’s quite the contrast from the safe and comfortable confines of Skingrad, setting the scene for what’s to come. Something bad definitelydidhappen here, and all fingers seem to point to the overnight jungle that’s sprung up on the horizon.
First, though, some fingers are being pointed at me, which means it’s fight time. ESO’s combat still has thatSkyrimweightlessness that makes each sword strike feel like the waft of a feather when you’re right up in the thick of it, and most of my encounters descended into a maddened frenzy of simple mouse-mashing. Class specific skills earned through levelling can be mapped to 1-5 on your keyboard to spice things up a notch, as well as an Ultimate set to R - though thanks to my preview character’s exceedingly generous stat base, this too felt like I could simply rinse-and-repeat them all in order without really eating into my magic or stamina bars. Still, while I wouldn’t say there’s a lot of skill involved in any given combat encounter, I do like how active they are, as I was always circling my opponent to stay out of harm’s way, dodging area-of-effect attacks laid out in red zones on the floor, dashing out of the way of charges, blocking big swings, and occasionally hammering both mouse buttons together to interrupt their next attack. Yes, it’s all a bit mindless, but certainly a touch more engaging than what I remember aboutthe fisticuffs I had in Skyrim.
Still, as I mince up the feathered and scorpion-like bodies of chimeric Wildburn Tharrikers and the rune-etched faces of various bears and lynxes lurking about, I eventually come across Ostumir proper - or at least what’s left of it. The locals who once lived on these rolling hills of farmland tell me they were rather taken by surprise when this jungle suddenly appeared beneath their feet overnight, sending their houses and manors skyward up into the lush green canopies of its twisted woodwork. It’s an eerie sight, seeing so many trees wearing cottages like cardigans, especially when they’re all dangling several storeys above your own head. Sure, ESO isn’t the prettiest game out there - to put it politely, you can probably still feel every bit of those ten years in how it looks and feels to play - but the crucial thing is that the world still feels evocative, drawing your eye forward with its wild scenery as you venture out to your next objective marker.
But even if I was playing alone, I can also see ESO being a good podcast game, or something to unwind with. Combat isn’t so difficult as to require a huge amount of concentration, for example, and the dripfeed rhythm of its ‘one more thing’ story beats were enough to keep me firmly in its grip as I ploughed forward - so much so that when my demo handler told me it was time to stop, I felt genuinely bereft that I wasn’t going to be able to see the quest through to its conclusion. That, and also mildly relieved that my impromptu co-op partner hadn’t just stopped following me out of boredom or disdain over my fire-staff-wielding abilities a moment ago, but that they, too, had probably been booted from their demo PC.
