The Elder Scrolls Online goes out of its way to sell its peculiar coupling of incompatible parts, however. When you first load up the game and enter character creation, rhythmic strings and kettledrums crescendo until they are joined by French horns and virtual choristers. The famous Elder Scrolls theme begins to play, and you turn your attention to choosing a race from this famed fantasy universe, from the haughty High Elves to the feline Khajiit. Then you choose from one of four classes and begin to customize your character, using all sorts of sliders to make your fanged Orc dragonknight look as fearsome as possible, or to make your pale Nord sorcerer look so angelic that she might have floated down from the heavens. This is a great start. You feel the energy. You’re ready to make a name for yourself on the continent of Tamriel.
If I had to pick a highlight of my time with the console versions of The Elder Scrolls Online store: Tamriel Unlimited, it would be the moment when I logged back into the PC version and realized I missed the subtle differences I enjoyed on the Xbox One. There’s no doubt that the textures and overall graphics quality of the PC version are more impressive, but something about this massively multiplayer online role playing game feels a little more like its cousin Skyrim – in a good way. There’s a touch of it in the closer, over-the-shoulder point-of-view, and I like how it mimics Skyrim’s menus. In that moment, I realized I wanted to make the Xbox One my main TESO platform, despite having put months’ worth of time into my PC version, and that’s the greatest compliment I can give it.
As in Skyrim, it’s the quests you find from random townsfolk and Dunmer guar herders that make up the bulk of the PvE experience, as well as stories from series favorites such as the Mages’ and Fighters’ Guilds. They’re fully voiced to a degree that puts even Star Wars: The Old Republic to shame, although the quality of the delivery from the limited voice actors ranges from adequate to robotic (particularly for some male Argonians). The catch? If you’re unaccustomed to the conventions of MMOs, you may bristle at the sight of other adventurers undertaking the same clandestine dealings with the same sketchy Breton landowners. These stories written for a singular hero but delivered to a crowd are a spot where ESO seems to hold onto its single-player beginnings more than it probably should.
This is an MMO, so you’ll truly appreciate it when you’re playing alongside loyal party members. While its still fun to go exploring on your own and follow your main storyline to the end, your true enjoyment of the game will arrive with other questers in tow. A feeling of ultimate gratification will hit you when several other warriors join in your fight against powerful foes. Voice chat is the main feature included for the console versions, yet the lack of a text chat option hurts the human interaction element. It’s needlessly tougher to interact with guilds and invite players into your session with no way to type out your inquiries.
My one big problem thus far is the lack of solid training on how everything works — most specifically the crafting system — once you get out into the open world. No, I don’t want the game to hold my hand, and yeah, my group may already have these roles chosen by different people, but even learning just a little bit about these through a couple of story quests so that the players can decide if they want to pursue them more or not would be helpful.
The Elder Scrolls Online often feels compromised as both an MMORPG and as an Elder Scrolls gold for sale game, but there’s one respect in which it finds a beautiful balance between the two. This is its role-playing system, where four broad character classes are merely the starting point. Each class has three specialisations, but armour and weapon specialisations are completely separate from these and bring their own active and passive skills, as do your race and your guild alignments. You can even get access to new lines by becoming a vampire or werewolf, as per Elder Scrolls tradition. Skill trees level independently of your character and skill points are awarded as quest rewards and for exploring and finding Skyshards as well as for levelling up. From all of this, you need to pick just six active skills to use, although you can swap between two skill-and-weapon sets from level 15.
