The Elder Scrolls: A Promise Unfulfilled | Complete Elder Scrolls Documentary, History and Analysis

“You will get lost,” the game store employee cautioned me some twenty years ago as I held, in my hands, a sealed copy of The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall. He warned of the incredibly vast world and treacherous dungeons awaiting me in the second entry to the then low-profile Elder Scrolls series. And he was right! I hadn’t played anything like Daggerfall before, and rarely anything as compelling since. The moment I booted up the game I was aghast at the overwhelming options I had. The character creation hinted at skulking the streets at nightfall, whispering secrets to low-lifes and burglarizing houses, crafting my own unique magic, or even becoming a chivalrous knight who could speak the tongues of royalty. Daggerfall is my go-to reference when explaining what a role-playing game truly is: experiencing a world and story through a unique pair of eyes. And I did get lost in Daggerfall, not only in its labyrinthian dungeons with death traps and pitfalls, but lost in the world it begged me to experience. So, I find it ironic that The Elder Scrolls series, too, seems to have lost its way: in its goal, design pillars, and sense of identity. Every title has been a vast fantasy sandbox where you can do anything from slaying beasts, delving into dungeons, or riding off into the sunset to discover new horizons. So how could I fault these often-claimed masterpieces? Because they could have been so much more. True, the lore has been expertly explored and expanded upon by Michael Kirkbride, Ken Rolston and others, and the newer technology has provided a more seamless adventure. But the developer’s original drive to create something never before experienced has been cast aside to make more popular games. For me, the series has strayed so far so as to become something like an estranged friend. But only the foolhardy would state that the best-selling role-playing game series of all time is a disappointment. After all, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has sold more copies than any other RPG to ever hit the home console or computer. So, how can I claim it’s fallen short of its manifest destiny? I have compiled notes from over 20 years of game development, so I’m speaking not only as a fan of the series for over two decades, but from a documentary perspective as well. So here is my retrospective and analysis of the best-selling RPG series, Elder Scrolls, and why, despite its continually increasing popularity, it has lost its ambition and identity. This is my take on how the series’ once-revolutionary features have stagnated and even declined over time. Bethesda Softworks started off as a small team of game developers working out of the home of its founder, Christopher Weaver. They’d created a few sports titles and other games by the time the 1990’s rolled around, even acquiring the license to make a couple Terminator games, one of the biggest blockbuster movie franchises at the time. But around 1992, after finishing work on Terminator 2029, game designer and programmer Julian LeFay started assembling a team at Bethesda to create a game that would become his magnum opus: a fantasy adventure for the ages, inspired by his love for tabletop RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons, and heavily influenced by the gritty gladiatorial exploits of the 1989 Mad Max-meets-Spartacus movie: Blood of Heroes, starring Rutger Hauer. The original game design had a medieval-style gladiator theme where you control a party and fight in coliseums against teams of fighters in each major city of the land. One notable team in this early concept was The Blades - a name later used in Elder Scrolls lore for the faction serving as both the Imperial guard and its spies. But during development the game became so much more than just about the coliseum, and Bethesda decided to switch gears. Taking inspiration from classic RPGs, they set off to accomplish the impossible: to take the mechanics of small-scale dungeon delvers and bring it into an immense, vibrant world that also included towns, guilds, forests, and plains. It was ambitious as hell and the team knew it. But about a year into development, newcomer Blue Sky Productions (soon to become Looking Glass Studios) released Ultima: Underworld, a paradigm shift in immersive games, featuring true 3D environmental interaction. Seeing the fanfare for Underworld’s release was disheartening for Julian, who saw the clear technical advantage that game had over their project’s singular plane of gameplay. Undeterred, they continued moving forward, as one thing that Bethesda’s project had over its competition was its scope. Only outer-space simulators like Elite could rival it, but here they weren’t generating simple spheres and white dots against a black background -- it was creating a massive world with countless cities, towns and dungeons, in addition to its rich history and lore. Game dev colleagues at SirTech, who at the time were developing the latest in the Wizardry series, literally laughed at the idea that what Julian and his team set out to accomplish could even be done. Despite never taking on something this massive before, in 1994 we got our headfirst dive into the war-torn fantasy land of Tamriel: also known as The Arena… Known affectionately by fans as the “Father of the Elder Scrolls”, Julian LeFay was the project’s leader, and together with designers Vijay Lakshman and Ted Peterson, spearheaded development and design decisions that still echo in the series today. These are the unsung heroes of The Elder Scrolls. Even titles released decades later borrowed mechanics, ideas and lore from their 1994 brainchild, Arena. The game opens with you confined in a dungeon and having a vision of a woman telling you of a sordid conspiracy: the Imperial Battlemage, Jagar Tharn, has imprisoned Uriel Septim with powerful magic and has taken his place as Emperor. You must now escape and find pieces of the Chaos Staff, a powerful artifact -- and the only way to destroy Tharn and save Tamriel from a reign of darkness. While adventuring, the sheer interactivity and scope of the city and outdoor areas are staggering. Using procedural generation to create unlimited terrain with countless houses, multiple guilds and shopkeepers, it was the foundation of something great, despite its rudimentary controls and limited engine. Missing its original release date of Holiday 1993, Arena launched in a rough state in the then-unfavorable release window of March, 1994. After multiple patches, it was then re-released featuring an updated CD version. Though now being the most dated and unintuitive of the entire series, Arena’s controls and interface were on-par with games of that era, with magazines praising its graphics as being cutting edge. Their quiet release was quickly followed by word of mouth that spread like wildfire, gaining a cult following and high anticipation for a sequel. And after two grueling years, a sequel we got. After Arena won a Game of the Year award in 1994 and became a sleeper hit, work immediately began on a bigger, better follow-up. Using Bethesda’s in-house XnGine, first built for Terminator: Future Shock, this ambitious title started off as Mournhold, set in the Dark Elf region, Morrowind. Plans changed, however, and Daggerfall became the decided name and setting for The Elder Scrolls: Part 2. Every shortcoming of the original game was improved upon. And probably the most signature development in the game’s RPG mechanics was born: improving skills through use. Utilizing plasma fractals to procedurally generate terrain, and assembling building and dungeon tiles to create massive cities, graveyards, buildings, and dungeons, it’s truly a marvel what a small team in the mid 90’s accomplished. With a surprisingly modern control set and UI with a minimal fullscreen mode and full mouselook feature (considered unusual at the time of release), the game is still quite playable today. Turning the pages of the game’s manual accentuated the fact that this wasn’t a cheap attempt to capitalize on a successful game. This was a leap forward and was shooting right for the stars. The ability to be a Climbing catburglar, a Critical-Striking assassin, or even a chivalrous knight who gains honor and praise from nobility, Daggerfall aimed to be a fantasy life simulator, not a mere “game”. It’s unprecedented scope is larger than real-life England, and has so much to discover and do that it could take players real-life years to experience it all. We’re accustomed to condensed game worlds which approximate cities with a handful of buildings, but High Rock, Orsinium and Hammerfell literally house 750,000 NPCs. Cities are mazes of houses, taverns, guilds, temples, and shops. And for over 10 years, Daggerfall held the record for largest seamless world ever created for a land-based game. Project leader Julian LeFay later claimed it was his most difficult project ever and it nearly killed him. Ted Peterson separately stated as much in his experience, and with the massive achievement this game was in 1996, there’s no question this was true. The story thrusts you into a secret meeting with the Emperor himself, where he entrusts you to find the secret behind recent hauntings by the late king of Daggerfall. This is a stirring and exciting introduction, but things quickly go awry when your ship is destroyed in an unnatural storm. Amidst your travels, you’re gently reminded of a quest to pursue, often with a messenger sneaking a letter into your hand or pack, unobserved. It is a subtle guiding of the hand, rather than a giant arrow and quest tracker pointing you in the suggested direction at all times. And one has to read their journal and pay attention to conversation to complete the storyline - an expectation rarely demanded of gamers today. You will discover new systems within the game as you play: randomly generated quests at taverns, temples and guildmasters; countless guilds and factions, all with their own perks and hierarchies; deep crafting systems, commerce, barter and banking. You can also purchase a house to rest and store gear, and there are boats that can be rented or bought allowing faster sea travel. Wagons allow mobile storage, and riding a horse is quicker on the roads, and grants more punctual fast travel to other locations on the world map. Yet fast travel in Daggerfall isn’t instant like in most games - it documents actual days and hours spent, which have consequences. Events and holidays can pass, and windows for important meetings can close. Loans from banks of each region are available, but if you default you’d answer to that region’s law enforcement in the future. For this and other crimes, guards will try to arrest you, requiring you to go to court to plead innocent or guilty. You can then choose to use evidence or, with the right skills, lie your way out of serving a sentence - a glimpse of how ambitious Daggerfall is. The game also features language skills. Speaking to imps, dragons, giants, and other creatures results in them being non-hostile, but to me this feature does seems underdeveloped, as one can’t carry on full conversations. In addition to a comprehensive alchemy system, you can trap your enemies’ souls in gems to craft powerful magic items; and has now become a staple of the series. Daggerfall tracks reputations with various economic classes, and you can use specific skills to better communicate with nobles, merchants and commoners. This helps you carve out a niche for your character who will seek out similar folk to get help, directions or quests. The new engine, though still featuring flat sprite models, is fully 3D, clearly superior to its flat 2-axis predecessor. I’ve rarely seen dungeons so multilayered, complex to a point where the 3D map can’t always save you. Tall castles, mountains and deep falls punctuate the world, and a new skill at the time, Climbing, was implemented. Dynamically scaling any wall or building, and sneaking into the 2nd floor was never before seen in a game, and sadly, has never been re-implemented in the series since. However, the game’s shortcomings do surface, as the lovingly nicknamed “Buggerfall” has major technical issues. One can fall through walls and floors into an endless void, and occasional quest-breaking glitches and crashes occur. And after playing many hours you’ll begin to see an overuse of textures, and repetitive, uninspired terrain, mostly empty of life. Daggerfall introduces probably the most comprehensive spellcrafting system ever made for a video game. Levitating to reach higher elevations, walking on water, draining life, as well as dozens of other effects, with modifiers like durations, types of targets affected, and combinations of multiple effects. Much of this was carried over from Arena, demonstrating how staggeringly powerful that system was. Travel and camping are immersive and dangerous and you’ll feel genuine dread when you read the four, horrible words, “There are enemies nearby.” The howls of a lycanthrope, or the shrieks of a wild atronach still get me to this day. The sound design, though simple, repetitive and outdated, is still effective at times. Sometimes Daggerfall’s brilliance is subtle, with weather patterns that change the landscape during winter and summer months, and the dynamic shift of Eric Heberling’s inspired soundtrack into eerie music as you near a crypt, or the swell of whimsical strings during the pitter-patter of a rainy day, or the gloomy drones of a dungeon -- occasionally accented by a distant howl, or worse, the creak of a door opening behind you. It’s little details like these that make Daggerfall… Daggerfall. An unmistakable atmosphere, so memorable, and honestly, never quite replicated in any other game I’ve played. It triumphantly raised the bar for what computer role-playing games could be. After Daggerfall’s release, plans for a third entry buzzed around Bethesda’s office. Various ideas and plans were thrown around, but after deliberation, the project was temporarily shelved and two smaller spinoff games were planned instead: An Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire and The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard. Originally planned to be an expansion pack for Daggerfall, 1997’s Battlespire ended up being quite a different beast. According to Bethesda’s website, it was a game focused on the “best” part of Daggerfall: dungeons. Of the entire series, Battlespire has the strongest visual influence by Mark Jones, who, as lead artist and Art Director at Bethesda, created many of the creatures in the series, as well as Battlespire’s cover, manual, sprites, and much of the texture work. The campaign is set during the reign of Jagar Tharn, mid the events of the first game, Arena. You are an apprentice headed for your final test at the Battlespire, a training facility for Imperial Battlemages. Once there, you realize the Daedric prince, Mehrunes Dagon and his army have killed nearly everyone and captured your partner. Thus begins your adventure into the dark unknown of varying realms of Oblivion to find your friend and defeat the prince. The Battlespire itself is in a pocket dimension of Oblivion, introducing firsthand the most personality, lore and insight into Oblivion and its inhabitants than in any other game in the series. Full voice acting also debuted in this game, and surprisingly, most of it is well-executed. Something about arguing with a Scamp, yelling at a Vermai, or trying to impress the aristocratic Dremora is both uncomfortable and strangely compelling. You can even have conversations with most Daedra, showing the multifaceted nature of their ethos and personality. The Dremora, Scamp, and Mark Jones’ personal favorite, the Clannfear, were all unveiled in Battlespire, and remain in the series today. However, gone is the expansive wilderness, cities and most friendly NPCs to talk to - this is a linear dungeon romp. But it does feature a solid character creation system that in many ways is even deeper than Daggerfall’s. Like its predecessor, you can add advantages and disadvantages to your character, but instead of adjusting how fast you level, you gain points to spend on skills, stats or starting items. You can even purchase magic or quality material items before starting the game. When the game does begin, you will be in for an adventure. An expertly crafted dark and moody atmosphere, with a chilling soundtrack that creates a more desolate mood, as opposed to the sometimes bright and energetic soundtrack of Daggerfall. But Battlespire is stuck in a technological rut. The game runs in an improved 640x480 SVGA resolution, but is still MS-DOS based and doesn’t support 3D acceleration. Enemies are strangely still 2D sprites, yet you acquire and wield fully 3D modeled and textured weapons and items. As the only multiplayer Elder Scrolls title for the first 20 years of the franchise, it features online play in free-for-all and team vs. team deathmatches, as well as co-operative missions. This was an unusual feature to develop into such a deep RPG series at the time, though when the online component does work, it is impressive seeing other player characters inside your own game. Probably the biggest strike against Battlespire other than its dungeon focus and insufficient scope, is its instability: glitches, broken geometry, crashes, and plenty of other issues. It’s hard to pinpoint the cause, but the dated XnGine, restrained to a limited operating system seems to be a culprit. The game received mediocre reviews at the time, being cautiously recommended as a stopgap until a “true” Elder Scrolls sequel was released. What do I feel Battlespire succeeded at most? The sense of being helpless, lost, alone, and unwelcome. And though Battlespire may not be the most popular game in the series by a long shot, it's easily one of the most intriguing from both a development and story standpoint. Julian LeFay had more creative control here than in previous games and considers Battlespire to be the smoothest production he’d worked on during his time at Bethesda - it was released in one year, without delays. Concurrently with Battlespire’s development, another team at Bethesda were hard at work on its sister project. And the two couldn’t be any more different. In a drastic shift from the gloominess of fighting Daedra in Oblivion, The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard is, as the title suggests, high adventure. A swashbuckling tale set in Stros M’Kai, a small island off the coast of the Redguard nation of Hammerfell, it is a giant tonal shift from the somber Elder Scrolls games of the past. But the complete shedding of character creation, standard role-playing elements, experience gain, and leveling up, is even more jarring. This is an action adventure game, taking more inspiration from Prince of Persia and the popular Tomb Raider series, than RPGs of the time. The storyline and gameplay are engaging enough, taking control of a young Redguard named Cyrus, and his tumultuous adventures during the Imperial takeover of Hammerfell. Though focusing on adventure game tropes, conversations, and puzzles over role-playing, it feels more like Pirates of the Caribbean than The Elder Scrolls. In what seemed like fate, a few years after its release Bethesda also created an official Pirates of the Caribbean game for Disney. Redguard was Todd Howard’s debut as project leader in an Elder Scrolls game. Others, who began here on Redguard, would also become integral to the series’ evolution, like Ken Rolston (who’d done some writing for Battlespire) and Michael Kirkbride. Designer Kurt Kuhlmann, who had worked on Daggerfall was signed on as well. This was the biggest team Bethesda had assembled so far, dwarfing the relatively small crew of Daggerfall and Battlespire, likely due to the leap into fully 3D art, characters, animation, and world. Despite the Redguard installer working only in Windows with the dated DOS-based XnGine, the added 3D acceleration does make for a sleeker and smoother experience. Nevertheless, this may have been a preview into Bethesda’s future stubbornness against change when it comes to game technology. Some of Redguard’s voice acting is good, with the actor who plays the protagonist, Cyrus, going on to voice characters in Elder Scrolls titles as late as 2007. But there are some duds here as well, with some of the worst voice acting I've heard in a big-budget game. But I feel the most damning thing about Redguard, is that the real reason most people picked up the game was the Elder Scrolls label, and all the expectations that came with it. Had this enjoyable action adventure been called something like 'The Legend of Cyrus: A Swashbuckling Adventure', I think audiences would have been more forgiving. But in the end, Computer Gaming World reported that both spinoff games, Battlespire and Redguard, were financial failures. Looking ahead, many on the team, including Todd Howard, Ken Rolston and Michael Kirkbride, were put onto the Elder Scrolls III project after Redguard’s launch. With loose concepts and early ideas mostly scrapped, real production began for what would become a legend among RPGs: Morrowind. TODD HOWARD: “The company went through some very hard times, we were very close to going out of business. Daggerfall did fine, then we spread ourselves thin, we started doing a lot of games, and they just weren’t good enough. And they weren’t the kind of games we should have been making at the time. “We did Battlespire, I did Redguard -- a game I love, it didn’t do well for the company, and we had been working on The 10th Planet, and there were other projects no-one heard about. So there was this period -- Daggerfall was ‘96, maybe to 2000 -- we went through some very rough times and that was when Bethesda became part where ZeniMax Media was founded and Bethesda became part of ZeniMax. And that gave us kind of a new lease on life, really. And we went into Morrowind. “I mean there were SIX of us at the time, right, the studio had gotten that small, and I was in charge of Morrowind. But by that time, once you get to that point, there was this element of ‘no fear’. Like, what’s the worst that gonna happen? We could go out of business. Well, let’s go all in. This is the game!” The original title for The Elder Scrolls Part III was going to be Tribunal, and set in the high elf region of the Summerset Isles. They planned to build it using an SVGA version of XnGine, but when production finally hit full stride, that idea was abandoned in favor of a new and more modernized engine, NetImmerse -- later to be known as Gamebryo. This engine was designed for expansive, massively multiplayer worlds, and iterations of it would later be used for titles like Warhammer Online, Defiance and Dark Age of Camelot. The once cohesive development team by this time was split into groups working on multiple games which divided the culture at Bethesda. Morrowind’s development had started and stopped several times, so Julian LeFay, who fully expected to continue work on this sequel, started developing a small side project in the meantime. When the Morrowind project launched into full momentum, however, he wasn’t picked for the team, and due to creative differences, the changing culture at the company and management conflicts, Julian, the creator of the Elder Scrolls series, departed Bethesda Softworks in 1998. CEO and founder Christopher Weaver was upset at his friend and longtime employee’s departure, but later they did reconcile, with Julian briefly consulting with Morrowind programming staff remotely. Yet Bethesda as a company was working on borrowed time, and after two large-scale game failures, they had to cover operating expenses or they’d have to fold. In order to acquire much-needed funding, in 1999 Chris Weaver co-founded a parent company, ZeniMax, with lawyer Robert Altman. Weaver contributed his entire Bethesda stock, and Altman came on board as CEO. ZeniMax procured funds from various entertainment investors and, in turn, kept Bethesda afloat. Then the turmoil began. Bethesda was split into two companies: Bethesda Softworks, the publisher, and Bethesda Game Studios, the developer. By 2001 - two short years later - the research and development branch Weaver managed as CTO was closed and his contract left unrenewed, effectively firing him from the company he founded. In a Frankenstein-like tale, Chris, in his efforts to save his own company, created the shell company that terminated his involvement in it. Multiple lawsuits against ZeniMax went on for years, with the latest settled out of court. Chris now teaches at universities including MIT. Altman resides as CEO and Chairman of ZeniMax at the time of this video’s release. It's undeniable that the 1990’s experienced the most lightning-fast growth in video game technology than any decade before or since. Even though the look and elegancy of games in the last 10 years have improved, compared to the advent of 3D accelerators, two new console generations, and a boom in hardware advancement, 1990 to 2000 was a technological paradigm shift! The 6-year gap between the second and third entry to The Elder Scrolls demonstrated this staggering change. Even in the era where role-playing games lagged behind the ever-popular shooter and action game genres, Morrowind was one of the most interactive and technically impressive games of that year. You could pick up items and place them on various surfaces or stow them away. Stealth was based on line of sight, and running and jumping were tied to stat algorithms. Some comical interactions with these systems included building your very own “Usain Bolt” - running bullet fast and leaping over valleys. The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind played its cards in 2002, and it was a good hand: with 3D accelerated graphics and a half decade of improved technology, the beautiful environments, smooth and articulated NPCs, advanced physics, and tailored architecture and terrain were mind-blowing. Having fully abandoned 2D sprite models for a fully polygonal world, major issues that had plagued Arena, Daggerfall and Battlespire were remedied overnight. Many systems Daggerfall put in place were simplified or scaled back in Morrowind. Despite its world being a fraction of the size -- the land mass of Vvardenfell was a 6000th the size of Daggerfall’s map -- it was a lot more detailed with denser locations and activities per square mile. Yet the lack of scale was jarring to returning fans of the series. As an example, at one vantage point in the game I could pan around and look at two completely separate cities, it was that condensed. This was the first time the act of creating your character was integrated into the beginning of gameplay, with various steps along the way, such as when an NPC asks your name or what your background is. In fact, it may have been one of the very first times this technique was used in a major game release. Morrowind begins with you as a prisoner on a ship headed to Vvardenfell; you awaken from dreams filled with mysterious visions after a strange storm. The main plot surrounds the Tribunal, the three god-like beings that rule over Morrowind. One character suspects you to be the Nerevarine, a reincarnation of their legendary Nerevar, the Protector of Morrowind. And as part of the main quest, you must perform five trials to prove your worth and destroy the malevolent Dagoth Ur. Though the rich lore and history of Morrowind was enjoyable, I did feel the Chosen One storyline could have been structured more creatively or less linearly. The game made NPCs into miniature encyclopedias with linked keywords so you can delve deeper into the lore if you wish. More options unlock if you increase their persuasion bar through bribes, flattery, threats, or other methods. You could also now potentially kill any NPC on the map, an improvement over Arena and Daggerfall. Guards reacted more naturally, rather than incessantly shouting “HALT!”, and if you managed to murder secretly, you could get away with it. And any Morrowind veteran will have flashbacks of the terrifying creatures found in Daedric shrines, or the abominable cliff racers shrieking at you from the skies and incessantly chasing you down. Morrowind eschewed the fast travel system of Daggerfall and Arena for a contextual travel system using Silt Striders, voyages by boat and occasional Magic Guild teleportation. This choice, along with a glacial movement speed was probably done to make the world seem much larger than it actually was. Yet it was enjoyable to have to locate NPCs, paths or signs in order to navigate to a destination, as compared to the overbearing navigation options of most modern games. With the undeniable boon to the technical aspects of the game due to a more powerful engine, a bigger team, bigger budget and a smaller, more handcrafted scope, Morrowind was so impressive that we didn’t notice aspects of the series this new entry shed in its gestation. Well...most of us didn’t. The advantage and disadvantage system of Daggerfall was cut, where you could take on positives like regeneration, spell absorption or being especially good at attacking specific monster types...or assign negatives, like being deathly prone to disease, or being unable to use a given weapon or armor type. This was replaced with birthsigns, with predetermined modifiers. Your skills no longer determined your starting gear, the starting reputation feature was removed, and the skill list was slimmed down immensely. Most notably, all language skills were removed, Streetwise and Etiquette were combined into the Speechcraft skill, and the climbing system was gutted. This diminished many character-carving ways you could define yourself. You can’t be a nobleman, a knight or a person of high esteem; you’re always going to be that prisoner, fresh off the boat. Despite changing the aesthetic and some of the lore established in Arena regarding the Dark Elf nation and its culture, Morrowind easily offers the most personality and unique look and feel of any Elder Scrolls game world: an unconventional wasteland populated with flying jellyfish; the eerie magical barricade surrounding the Red Mountain region; the adobe cities and steaming geysers and lava pits scattered across the volcanic landscape of Vvardenfell were alien and foreign, standing out from other fantasy RPGs of the time. Morrowind was the stepping stone between the precepts set forth by Arena and Daggerfall, and what The Elder Scrolls is known for today. It made the introduction of many series staples, such as the wondrous theme song and musical style of Jeremy Soule. Despite its inspired and evocative composition, though, it was crudely laid over gameplay. With music tracks grouped into two sets, “explore” and “battle”, it was like switching between two short playlists, and music often didn’t match the tone of what was happening on-screen. A new magic discipline, Conjuration, allows you to summon Daedra to fight by your side, as well as temporary magic weapons and armor. It’s a welcome addition to the already vast spellbook the series had to offer. Morrowind also showcased the widest range of projectile weapons in the entire series, hence its skill being dubbed “Marksman” rather than “Archery”. Most casual dialogue during gameplay was competently voiced now, and their selection of actors was mostly stellar. The gravelly world-worn voices of the Dunmer of Vvardenfell are unforgettable and strangely soothing, and the Imperial guard are sufficiently better-than-thou. This game was the final entry of the mainline series to see artist Mark Jones’ aesthetic influence. The notable 3D artist behind much of Daggerfall and Battlespire’s haunting visuals, along with stirring concept art by Michael Kirkbride, many of the morbid and unusual creatures and denizens of the wasteland were sparked from their unique styles - sometimes charming, and other times surreal...like from an eerie dream crafted by the likes of Boris Vallejo and Salvador Dali. After the massive success of Morrowind selling 4 million copies, numbers the series hadn’t seen before, and thanks to a growing fanbase and Xbox release, the team was immediately assigned to creating an expansion, which within five short months released as Tribunal. Set in the mainland Morrowind capital of Mournhold, it is a constricting change even from Morrowind’s relatively small setting. Though receiving mostly positive feedback and touting some inspired architecture and plotlines, in the hearts of most players, Tribunal didn’t quite capture what made Morrowind appealing as an open-world RPG. On the positive side, Tribunal is considered unique as it was the only expansion in The Elder Scrolls series to actually continue the core game’s storyline, rather than being a standalone side adventure. The next expansion, Bloodmoon, was released in 2003, about a year after the core game launched. Featuring snowy vistas and savage new creatures to battle, it was a more open-ended adventure, and was better received than the more linear Tribunal. Taking you to Solstheim, a small, frigid island sharing the coast of Morrowind and Skyrim. Bloodmoon re-introduces lycanthropy, a feature missing since Daggerfall. In the years that followed, another ZeniMax studio, Vir2L developed three mobile phone spinoff games in the Elder Scrolls Travels series -- titled Stormhold, Dawnstar and Shadowkey. They struggled technologically on the primitive cellphone hardware of the time, but featured some of Mark Jones’ final work on the series. Morrowind was a stunning technical leap from Daggerfall over its six years of planning and development, and improved many features in the process: AI, tailored environments and a more interactive world, but in its haste to shed the ways of the old, the team moved away, in part, from what made its predecessor so compelling: a colossal game world with nearly limitless opportunities and possibilities. Now all that was left was to make the game bigger, better and more dynamic. And Bethesda attempted to do just that in the years to come. With each new entry, the Elder Scrolls series has grown a much wider audience, but its aspirations have lessened. The first title, Arena, struggled with its restrictive technology and a scope which encompassed the entire land of Tamriel, but its sequel, Daggerfall, with tweaks, changes and additions is often regarded as the most ambitious role-playing game ever made. Conversely, after the technological leap of Morrowind, the fourth entry, Oblivion, offers a less striking improvement. Perhaps as a side effect of the Xbox 360 being the lead platform and a Playstation 3 port releasing later on, with console optimization being paramount, the graphical leap is a more modest one. Going back to a more traditional European climate and architecture, our first foray since Arena into the imperial province of Cyrodiil is an interesting one; vast towers and buildings piercing the sky were indeed impressive after the more primitive architecture of Morrowind. Shunning the refreshingly brief introduction and character creation of Morrowind, and starting you in yet another dank dungeon to fight rats and other beasts before reaching the surface, it was a little disappointing. Oblivion does, however, feature an innovative character creation and opening sequence which introduces you to the game’s controls, the core plot hook, as well as stealth, melee, ranged, and magic mechanics BEFORE you design your character. This allows you to settle into a playstyle before specializing in it. An NPC at the end of the tutorial even suggests which class fits you best, based on your behavior up to that point. This inspired technique would be later used in Oblivion’s designer, Ken Rolston’s next game: Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. It’s clear Bethesda Game Studios, its publisher and investors were going all-in on this franchise. The series’ recurring character, Emperor Uriel Septim is now voiced by Sir Patrick Stewart, with his son Martin given life and personality by actor Sean Bean, with other supporting roles by Terence Stamp and Jonathan Pryce, bringing Hollywood-level production values to the game’s story. And if you would note Oblivion for a single shift in direction, it’s a much stronger focus on plot and the ever-present main quest. At the beginning of the game, you are given a mission by the Emperor right before his assassination to seek out his true heir and through the power of his bloodline, restore the now-broken Covenant that keeps the dark forces of Oblivion at bay. This is an epic story of a grand scale, and is the game in the series most closely involved with the Daedric realms since Battlespire. Cyrodiil is an impressive 22 square miles, over twice the size of Vvardenfell in the previous game. With so many freedoms and such a vast open world, one can easily get enraptured in wanderlust and discovery, instead of engaging in the story written for you, something The Elder Scrolls has struggled with since its inception. But instead of making side quests and player-driven activities the point of the adventure, Oblivion wrangles you into the plot with a firmer hand, giving you immediate goals and missions to accomplish right off the bat, along with the introduction of the ever-present compass and quest marker system. Bethesda changed the game’s controls to emphasize combat over activating objects and speaking to NPCs. Combat, most would agree, has been one of the weaker parts of the series -- and is what Oblivion attempts to improve on most about its core gameplay. Weapon damage is now simplified to a single flat number, instead of damage ranges, and multiple attack types like in Morrowind. This scaling back resulted in many weapons feeling similar or identical in effectiveness. And more skills were condensed, such as combining Short and Long Blade to simply “Blade”. Oblivion swapped out the “miss-athon” of previous games’ hit chance system, and instead, guarantees strikes -- and amplifies weapon damage based on your skill stat instead. Fighting feels simplified, but more kinetic. If a strike or projectile lands on its target, it hits, no questions asked. Blocking is now assigned to your right click (or left trigger), so you must time your blows and blocks effectively to fight an enemy, rather than just swinging endlessly until one of you dies. Combat animations were overhauled, and bows have a new zoom option and are considerably more intuitive -- all to be expected with improving technology and the team’s familiarity with their engine. Excluding ethereal undead, like wraiths, material requirements for weapons to inflict damage on higher level monsters was removed. No longer do you feel the panic of attacking a Daedroth with an iron weapon, only for it to have no effect. The removal does make some sense: I mean, why should a character’s fist deal damage when a steel blade does not? But this limitation did make those encounters scarier and more exciting in previous games, the result was that certain battles were impossible until your character progressed -- probably by design. Additionally, Oblivion introduces the scaling mechanic where enemies get stronger as your character levels up. This is meant to make areas you haven’t visited yet still challenging should you take them on later than intended. But this has the side effect of occasionally making fights more difficult than they just were before you leveled, diminishing the sense of power you’ve gained. The game retains most of the character creation options Morrowind offered, but innovates in two areas: This is the first game in the series to introduce the now standard face-generation system. In previous Bethesda games each face was pre-modeled, so you’d have only a handful to choose from for each race/gender combination, and thus you would often see clones of yourself as NPCs. Oblivion attempts to solve this by providing a morphable face, allowing players to look unique while also serving as a tool for the devs to rapidly create NPCs that looked different from one another. Impressive for the time, but this system is far from perfect. The doughiness of the simple face model with only minor alterations for each race meant that every NPC seemed slightly related and off-putting. And the horrible skin textures and blotches of miscolored flesh tones wouldn't be quite as bad if the game didn't zoom uncomfortably close to their faces as you talk to them, putting these issues front and center. Disagreeable faces aside, the much touted Radiant AI system is easily Oblivion’s most original improvement to the formula. Perhaps borrowing a page from Gothic or Arcanum, non-player characters now wake up, talk to other NPCs in dynamic conversations, walk the streets, do their jobs, set up shops, and close them in the evening to sleep. Characters can now transfer into and out of buildings and other zones in realtime, rather than stay stuck in the zone they started in. Alert guards or hostiles can now run out a door or pursue you through one. This immersive quality makes the world feel that much more alive, and the series has improved for it. Voice acting is more expensive and time-consuming than inserting written words, yet Oblivion admirably made all dialogue in the game voiced rather than the previous hybrid of both voiced and text speech. The problem is that dialogue comes off as uneven at times. It now features simpler, more linear conversations, with questionable and at times comical voice acting. Inconsistent voiceover QA resulted in bad recording takes still existing in the final release, as well as abrupt conversations between NPCs and some poor delivery. This has led to Oblivion becoming the most unintentionally humorous game in the series. In a commendable but misguided attempt to “gameify” the speech system, a persuasion minigame was designed around the tenets introduced in Morrowind: admiration, coercion and bribery. But it was clunky and didn't add much to gameplay, so it's no wonder it was scrapped for the sequel. Two dearly missed features from Daggerfall were re-introduced, though touted as “brand new additions” for newcomers to the series: Horses, which are invaluable in traversing this larger game world; and the purchasing of houses in various towns around the country. Despite this expanded world, the game’s contextual travel options by boat and via the Mage’s Guild are no more, instead reintroducing the always-available fast travel to any major point on the map you’ve already visited before, with several locations immediately available from the start. These ease-of-play features make backtracking a breeze, though it dramatically lessens the sense of distance. If players overuse the fast travel system, it results in a world much larger than Morrowind, but FEELS smaller. In a call-back to the original game, Arena, and its earliest design concept, the Imperial City featured a coliseum with exciting gladiatorial fights. These grew progressively more challenging, and winning or losing a duel to the cheer of a bloodthirsty crowd was a fun distraction. A scrutinous eye will notice that many minor features have vanished since their last outing in Morrowind, two examples being lycanthropy and many weapon types. Additionally, all jump enhancing and levitation spells have been stricken from the spellbook in Oblivion moving forward. This is likely due to the limited technology and memory constraints put on the game and how cities were built. Morrowind was actually advanced for its time, as all settlements, cities and the like existed out in the open, right alongside the wilderness. As many of us tried in Morrowind with the Scroll of Icarian Flight, we could jump over mountains or cities in one gigantic leap, but Bethesda decided to cut back on resources used here, making major cities and buildings their own “walled-in” zones rather than keeping them in the open world. If you could actually levitate in Oblivion, you’d be met with an invisible wall or find yourself in a void between zones. Console hardware limitations likely had a big impact in the decision to divide up the Imperial City into smaller zones, as a similar compromise was reported by team members at Obsidian who used Bethesda’s same engine and toolkit to make the Fallout 3 spinoff, New Vegas, years later. Oblivion’s High Dynamic Range effects and bloom give a strange, overexposed and plastic look to many of the buildings and settlements in the world. And in spite of this being titled after the Daedric realm “Oblivion”, artist Mark Jones’s absence is felt. The Elder Scrolls setting here felt more like run-of-the-mill generic fantasy compared to Morrowind, Battlespire or even Daggerfall. Entering the foreboding Oblivion portals reveal but one realm, which, though looking impressively evil, felt a little too similar to the recent Lord of the Rings movies’ interpretation of Mordor, Sauron’s Eye and all. Much of Cyrodiil’s overworld is more pleasant and less dangerous than Morrowind, with little fear of swarms of slaughterfish in lakes, or monsters waiting over every hill. It’s indeed breathtaking to soak in the emerald green of the expansive forests, hills, underbrush, and plains, mostly inhabited by deer, rabbits and the like. It is fitting for a much more civilized and populated region of the world, but we have lost the nagging sense of danger as well. If Oblivion did one thing differently than the sardine can-packed world of Morrowind, it expanded the world and put partially procedurally generated terrain in-between locations, letting each area and location of interest breathe a little. Oblivion introduced a limitation of only having one summoned creature at a time, and made spellmaking a late-game feature, rather than being available early on. Stolen items are now marked as such so you can’t sell them outside of a Thieves’ Guild fence. Shop inventories are now sometimes stored off-map so you can’t pilfer all items. These changes are meant to balance how useful stealing is, but it’s annoying when you find out that the goods you want are impossible to steal, for no other reason than the designers didn’t want you to. The user interface in Oblivion probably displays the most personality of any of the games in the series, though not as customizable as Morrowind’s. Each stat, skill and ability has illustrations, icons and stylized descriptions, and breathes life and flavor into the game's menus and screens. Dungeons are more densely designed with frequent enemies and challenges, probably due to feedback that the long tunnel-like dungeons in Morrowind weren’t as immediately satisfying. And lore-established cities were much sparser than described in previous games. With the Imperial City being impressive but diminutive, instead of the sprawling metropolis it was described to be. This may actually have to do with onscreen NPC limits within the Gamebryo engine itself, but is more likely to have been a compromise made for easier porting to consoles with limited memory. Later in 2006, an expansion to Oblivion called Knights of the Nine was released. In this Arthurian tale, you must gather the mythical Crusader armor and weaponry and reassemble the titular Knights of the Nine in an effort to defeat the powerful demigod, Umaril. This compelling narrative follows through to a satisfying conclusion, but doesn’t change much with the basic gameplay tropes Oblivion had to offer. The second and final expansion released the following year, in 2007. Shivering Isles takes the player to a never-before-seen plane of Oblivion, the Realm of Madness. Featuring the vastly differing isles of Mania and Dementia, you must navigate the schemes of the Daedric Prince of Madness, Sheogorath. Any venture into a new and interesting Oblivion realm is always welcomed, but this expansion does lose some steam later on with its more repetitive quests. In the end, Oblivion is a smoother, more kinetic, yet uneven upgrade over Morrowind. The loss of more unique worldbuilding and the shedding of some of its deeper mechanics are missed, but if major steps forward like doubling the map size and improving AI were the direction the series was heading, then The Elder Scrolls V would surely go even further to impress us with its scope and ambition, right? From the very first moment you hit “New Game” in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, you can see a different design philosophy pervade than in previous games. In the most linear introduction to an Elder Scrolls game yet, one entire third of the lengthy opening finds you motionless in the back of a wagon. Another third literally has your hands tied with nothing to do but run. Forced camera movements requiring you to look skyward at the dragon, Alduin, charring Imperials with its scorching breath, or to jar your camera around in order to make things “epic”. Borrowing the narrow-corridor tricks many triple-A games of the time were using, this introduction is out of place in a game where 95% of the time you aren’t experiencing that sort of staged excitement. This shift is most readily explained by the departure of the lead designer of Oblivion and Morrowind, Ken Rolston, and the entrance of Emil Pagliarulo (who created the Dark Brotherhood questline for Oblivion and led the design team on Fallout 3), now as senior designer and writer for Skyrim, alongside series veterans Bruce Nesmith and Kurt Kuhlmann. Easily the most contentious thing about Skyrim is its complete overhaul of the progression system. While Morrowind’s shedding of Daggerfall’s character creation depth was disappointing, Oblivion’s fixation on its main quest, while simplifying abilities and item stats was off-putting, these now look like minor changes compared to the clean sweep Skyrim made with The Elder Scrolls’ RPG system. The attribute system that has been a staple of the series since day one was completely removed, replacing it with a simplistic Health, Magicka and Stamina system. It’s a weird combobulation of the previous stats. Health defines your hit points and how fast they regenerate (like a simplified Endurance), Magicka increases maximum spell points and their speed of recovery (like Willpower, but does not boost magic effectiveness), and Stamina governs carry weight and how fast you get exhausted (a sort of hybrid of Strength and Endurance from previous titles, but does not augment your damage). This foolproof “increase the green, red and blue bars” design almost reeks of arcade games. It also strangely disadvantages melee characters, where you will have to alternate between enhancing Stamina and Health each level up -- but mages can simply go full-Magicka to become spellcasting powerhouses. For the first time in the mainline series, Skyrim has a completely classless system where you’re meant to discover and evolve your character through your actions rather than through character creation. This is an admirable goal, but for every great idea Skyrim has, it stumbles with another that undermines its elegance. For example, removing attributes makes it so you improve at activities purely through using them, but then when you level up you have to decide which perk you want to acquire in any of the skill trees -- which all have minimum skill requirements. So you don’t organically improve your skills but still artificially get boons to them through the skill perks screen. To make this even more jumbled, each perk has prerequisite perks which sometimes have little to do with another. Why should you have to take a perk that increases sneak attack damage with a dagger before a similar sneak attack bonus for archery? This idea was heavily inspired by Bethesda’s last game, Fallout 3, then transplanted into the Elder Scrolls system -- which was well-known for its logical, improve-as-you-use-it skill progression system. Combined with rapidly reusable skill trainers in towns, which can train you up to high levels in a particular field in a matter of minutes, and the level scaling system which makes enemies tougher as you level up, it’s possible to change lanes with your character or apply perks in such a way while increasing your level that you inadvertently make combat much more difficult for yourself after leveling -- a puzzling side effect of this inconsistent system. I don’t criticize the classless system on its core concept. I’ve played many games without classes I love and enjoy. I criticize the lack of weight and consequences within any character progression. Everyone can cast fire or healing spells; everyone is competent using any weapon type, and anyone can sneak and steal items. It’s not that you can no longer choose a class, it’s that you’re all classes at once. Your character is just magically great at everything. To top it all off, you get dragon powers to boot, which further separates you from being just another inhabitant of this living world. You are a “protagonist” with a capital “P”, no longer a normal denizen who rose to become better than the rest. Fantasy fulfillment is one thing, but the enamorment with convincing the player that they’re The Chosen One or a Messiah can get old fast. Additionally, there are actions and sequences that are much easier to pull off with spellcasting, so everyone by necessity simply becomes a magic user hybrid by default. Creating a compelling challenge isn’t always about having an easy solution in hand, limitations are a necessary component to any game, so how you choose to overcome a given obstacle using your own set of abilities makes the experience engaging. Mechanics, such as elemental physics, introduced early in the game’s dungeons are all but abandoned later in the game. And by tying major progression directly into the mainline quest in the form of learning dragon shouts, Skyrim is actively guiding you through its storyline, rather than leaving you to discover your own story. This speaks to the streamlining approach Skyrim’s design took this time around. In a talk with senior designer, Emil Pagliarulo, reveal his design priorities: to cut rather than add. His self-proclaimed love of the K.I.S.S. (Keep it Simple, Stupid) axiom characterizes him as a designer more focused on removing ideas that don’t immediately work or have much function, rather than adding or expanding on existing concepts. EMIL: “But you could look at a standard controller, the general gist was, you know ‘A’ would be a positive response, ‘X’ would be a neutral response, ‘B’ would be a negative response and ‘Y’ would be a question. Okay, and so that would allow us to have more fluid interactions with our characters.” This isn’t a closed-book analysis of the approach used in the series as of late, but it does paint a compelling picture of why The Elder Scrolls, and Skyrim in particular, has narrowed its focus to such simplicity. The result is seen everywhere: Since Morrowind, the number of weapon types and armor set pieces have been halved; alchemy is less comprehensive and spellmaking has been completely eliminated from the game. Incidentally, the need to “rest and meditate on what you have learned” in order to level up was also cut in Skyrim, which is a trivial but telling change in its quest to streamline the game, at the cost of its endearing and unique qualities. Simpler tunnel-vision dungeons that are much less punishing than the ones featured in earlier games, lead you directly to the end like an amusement park ride. Cities, forts and settlements are smaller than ever and are sparsely populated with citizens, who only converse in mostly scripted one or two-liners. And the game world is so condensed you don’t FEEL like you’re in a real fantasy nation; more like an interactive theme park. The punishingly harsh climate of Skyrim -- alluded to in previous games’ lore -- has no bearing on your survival. You can walk in the barren wilderness during a blizzard for hours to no effect. Had they taken advantage of this missed opportunity and made survival a challenge, keeping warm in the colder areas and hunting and cooking your prey, that would have made traversing the wilds much more compelling, thematic and dangerous. Crafting food in Skyrim is so fleshed out that it seems like it was at one point in development, a much more important feature cut down at the last minute. Crafting what are essentially weaker potions doesn’t make any sense alongside self-regenerating health and healing magic everyone starts out with. Oblivion had raised the bar of NPC interaction, having the denizens of the world wander, go to work, interact and converse in realtime. Due to unintentional hiccups though, it appears the Radiant AI system was turned down a notch for Skyrim, resulting in scripted dialogue between characters you were absolutely meant to overhear when first entering the area. It felt contrived and forced, rather than Oblivion’s secret joy of eavesdropping on others’ conversation. Skyrim killed off all movement-enhancing skills. Running, Jumping, Swimming and the like can no longer be improved, effectively eliminating builds like Acrobats or Catburglars. Many other skills were combined, such as merging all melee weapon skills to the simplistic One-Handed and Two-Handed skill trees. This removed the personality and choice of using different types of weapons, and often resulted in just chasing whichever had the biggest damage number. Designer Emil Pagliarulo and director Todd Howard are on record stating they are more interested in cutting superfluous features or content rather than expanding what they have. But that, in the end, can be subjective. Are larger, expansive worlds with the ability to levitate, climb, run faster or jump further unneeded or unwanted? Many would disagree. TODD: “We go at it each time with ‘let's not just look at the last one and say ‘what does it need?’ you know, I think most people -- most fans will look at it and say ‘It's great, you should change the leveling, add spears, add crossbows, add this and add some more races,” and I usually approach it from ‘well I want to know what skills are superfluous,’ that we should fold into something else to make the choice of what your character is more meaningful. Make THAT choice more meaningful, and how are the races different, you know? I think ten races is enough. How is playing an orc different than playing a high elf? Or you know, those kind of things.” Blacksmithing is a compelling new addition that debuted in Skyrim, where one can harvest materials and create their own armor and arsenal. Bruce Nesmith, one of the last people still working on the series since Daggerfall, also unveiled the Radiant Quest system, which was supposed to be the flagship feature of Skyrim. Radiant generates side quests based on your actions and behavior during the story, and populates locales you’ve yet to visit with tailored encounters. This is an interesting development, and it’s good to see someone at Bethesda trying to push the envelope beyond the safety of the proven successful formula, but the result is so subtle that most players may not even notice. Though its unprecedented sales figures might mislead you otherwise, there are three likely reasons Skyrim sold better than any of its predecessors. Firstly, it released day one on the most popular console platforms, the Xbox 360 and the PS3, several years into their lifecycle so the install base was much higher than when Oblivion launched. The second is that game franchises gain more fans over time, and with now two console releases under their belt, hype was high. Third was that Skyrim was clearly designed from the ground up as a more marketable product. For the first time in the series, it has a branded and marketable mascot, the Dragonborn, with their iconic horned helmet silhouette. The game showcases its slick silver-on-black minimalist look, consistent through the disc case, its main menu, user interface and all throughout the game. Additionally, the trailers and gameplay focused on its big selling point: you are a Dragonborn and you get to fight massive dragons -- something many video games have struggled with technologically over the years. It was dead simple, and you could sell that appeal to anyone in a 30-second trailer. Another impressive thing about Skyrim is its effortless and emergent physics. Improving on the already satisfying Havok physics system in Oblivion, Skyrim flaunts its kinetic weight and ragdoll systems with giants who can launch you a hundred feet into the air, projectiles that knock back enemies and pin them to objects, and massive dragons who swoop down, snatch up victims and fling them far into the distance. These were mind-blowing the first few times we witnessed them. Skyrim’s minimalist interface, though slick-looking, handles like a spreadsheet of names, lists and categories. Combined with Skyrim’s new dual-wielding control system, while intuitive for simple loadouts, you end up going in and out of menus more than ever before when switching between weapons, shields and spells -- breaking the pace of gameplay. The first expansion to Skyrim was Dawnguard, which focuses on the titular faction of vampire hunters. You can join the Dawnguard or their enemy faction and become a Vampire Lord, introducing a specialized skill tree with vampire powers. Werewolves are given a skill tree as well. This continued the trend of marketable and easily digestible content packs. In Skyrim you can fight dragons. In Dawnguard, you can fight or become a vampire. Simple, easy to pitch, and was met with a positive reception. The second expansion was more controversial, however. Hearthfire didn’t possess a grand storyline or much of a plot. It just allows the player to build a house in one of three locations in the world, and the option to adopt children. It has been criticized due to its fairly limiting options: the inability to customize your home as much as you might expect, and children do not develop or age. Hearthfire was a neat distraction, but many reviewers agreed there wasn’t much of a point to it. In its third and final expansion, Dragonborn, you again visit Solstheim, the same island featured in Morrowind’s second expansion, Bloodmoon. Though treading familiar ground, it builds on the lore introduced in the core storyline, making you feel challenged. You’re no longer the only Dragonborn in town. Most interesting to me was visiting the Lovecraftian realm of Apocrypha, the Daedric realm of Hermaeus Mora -- a welcome peek into previously unseen planes of Oblivion. Skyrim has to date been released on five separate console platforms, as well as releasing on the PC twice: the original version in 2011, and in 2016 with the Special Edition that included improved shaders and post-processing effects, as well as support for some community-created mods on console. A full Skyrim virtual reality conversion was released in 2017, and though impressive and immersive with the right VR setup, this business practice has drawn ire from many players, especially on PC, where one might have bought the retail-priced game three whole times, for what is at its core, the same game content with different controls or visuals. The uglier, corporate side of post-Zenimax Bethesda reared its head following Skyrim's success, however. With a failed attempt at monetizing community modifications on the Steam platform, proceeded by a complete microtransaction-based mod store for Skyrim and Fallout 4, launched a few years later called the Creation Club. While I support the idea that hardworking amateur developers in the community get paid for their work, it rubbed many fans the wrong way, seemingly just a way to get a cut of the money raised by hardworking modders, rather than creating compelling content themselves. Skyrim was the biggest stamp of approval the company has ever received on their products. Nothing about “23 million sold” says you’re on the wrong track, and that's disappointing. For every good addition or tweak to the controls or formula I felt the game aced, I can think of three others that were simplified, dumbed down or completely removed. At this point it seems like Bethesda is treating their series like a zero-sum game -- where you can only add a system or feature if you cut another. A far cry from the aspiration of the earlier Elder Scrolls games - to achieve something greater that has never been experienced before. It seems that in the minds of many regulars, the series has already peaked -- and that is one mountain Todd Howard’s team hasn’t been able to climb. Taking a page out of Blizzard Entertainment’s playbook, ZeniMax formed a team to start working on a massively multiplayer online game set in The Elder Scrolls universe. With talent who had worked on Dark Age of Camelot and other titles in the past, they formed an entirely new division to create the game: ZeniMax Online Studios. Production began in 2007, just a year after Oblivion launched and was a business decision that made sense given the gaming climate at the time. Blizzard Entertainment’s leap into the world of MMOs had proven to be a colossal success, enjoying several years of over ten million paying subscribers. The prospect of guaranteed customers each month is any company’s dream, and so the troubled development of The Elder Scrolls Online began. After seven long years, ESO launched in 2014 to a resounding thud. Major influencers and reviewers panned the game, citing its bugs, stability issues and exploits. Some users paid for a subscription but their account wasn’t activated. And reports of terrible zone instancing where you’d enter a solo quest area only to see everything you’d have to fight already dead and looted. With a retail-price entry fee on top of a paid subscription model set against the shiny and polished World of Warcraft and Guild Wars 2 as competition, ESO had a long, hard climb to regain its trust and interest from fans. But eventually, they managed to do just that. ZeniMax Online launched Tamriel Unlimited a year later -- a major update to the game which eliminated paid subscriptions, and simultaneously launched the game on current gen consoles. With this dramatic shift in business model and years of patching and content updates, the game has improved greatly. Playing it today is a smooth and enjoyable online experience, and has all the hallmarks of an MMO you can sink hundreds of hours into. But does it replace the single player experience of a proper Elder Scrolls game? Well, the combat is solid. There are the abilities you’d expect in the genre that will have you cycling your number keys, tossing spells and using abilities against your enemies. They brought back Oblivion’s lockpicking system, and the mainline series’ stealth mechanics which allows you even kill some townspeople and evade guards, as well as other features familiar to the series. But there are so many more limits and guidelines this time around. Some chests will literally tell you that you need to start a questline to open them. The enemy AI is woefully short-sighted and half the time won’t notice their cohorts’ slaughter next to them, and the entire experience feels like an MMO modified to be more like The Elder Scrolls, not the other way around. It’s difficult to immerse yourself in a world that earnestly tells you that you’re its savior, when you’re surrounded by hundreds of other “heroes” riding flaming horses. No suspension of disbelief can overcome the spectacle of townspeople stepping over their dead colleagues, or not batting an eye at dozens of Daedra pets trampling through their town. The Elder Scrolls Online clearly wanted to emulate the single player RPGs that inspired it. And it does a competent job at that, considering the standard MMO trimmings players expect from this type of game. It looks and sounds like a bigger Skyrim, it plays somewhat like an online Oblivion, but it FEELS like an MMO. If Oblivion and Skyrim’s less original look and feel wasn’t enough, ESO’s brand new team and graphics department further diluted into a more generic aesthetic. Take away the branding, and now it looks just like any other fantasy world. Even the series’ staples like the Clannfear have been changed to look and act more like velociraptors. The game’s story and setting was headed up by a newly-appointed loremaster, Lawrence Schick, longtime friend of Ken Rolston, who had worked on Kingdoms of Amalur together. Relatively new to the series, Lawrence carefully studied the previous games’ history and plots to build up a true-to-form reimagining of previously explored locations. Now I can’t tell if I’m personally maddened more by the team’s apparent reverence of the series’ lore and roots, or the actual gameplay’s disrespect of everything the Elder Scrolls universe was meant to be. For starters, ESO’s worldbuilding is as subtle as a troll’s club to the face. Glenumbra, for example, was featured in the game Daggerfall, right? Daggerfall featured a ghost story and a temperate rainforest climate. So naturally, in ESO, there are towering monster vines with undead and necromancers sprawled everywhere. It's like they take and understand the lore of each province then crank it all the way to a screaming 11 -- but that's part and parcel for an online game that must house and entertain thousands of people at a time in a densely populated environment. It's a shame the subtleties of the single player games were lost, because at times, ESO is a marvel to look at. I actually liked playing it a lot more than I thought I would, considering my long history with the series. And I do enjoy the exaggerated world it lays down before me -- but I don't believe it. In a way, an Elder Scrolls MMO was the eventual goal of the series, even as early as the second game. In my YouTube interview with one of the series’ creators Julian LeFay last year, he stated that he designed, all the way back in 1996, each and every NPC to have their own individual stats, skills, inventories, and everything that would define an actual player character, with the intended goal to eventually implement multiplayer. He described his vision to make a fully-featured world of the same colossal scope of Daggerfall, but with each and every NPC being able to be taken over by a player. A truly ambitious idea, but as the troubled small-scale multiplayer in Battlespire showed, the engine and the hardware at the time was hard-pressed to do what we can do so effortlessly today. Later taking another cue from Blizzard’s successful franchising of their Warcraft property, a digital card game spinoff was developed called The Elder Scrolls: Legends. Announced at big expos like E3 and PAX, it was met with little fanfare from most audiences, arriving a couple years late and competing against Blizzard’s financial and competitive home run: Hearthstone. Though Legends introduces interesting mechanics like multiple combat lanes and such, in the end, you couldn’t escape the fact it was just another attempt at the Magic: The Gathering formula. Enjoyable, but forgettable unless you’re an ardent fan of the collectible card game genre, or just enjoy the game for its beautiful artwork and the quality Elder Scrolls narrative. As early as Morrowind, Elder Scrolls games provided a flexible toolset released for the public to create modifications. This ignited the now massive Elder Scrolls modding community we know today that grows with each new game. The skill requirement for the system was low enough that just about all the designers could work and build quests, ideas and designs directly into the game on the fly, which allowed for deployment of concepts sometimes literally overnight. This flexibility no doubt aided in the creation of these worlds by Bethesda, but as time went on, it might have become a crutch as well. Having a huge team of cooks in one big kitchen may have resulted in the mixed and uneven world we have in the Elder Scrolls today, where each area, zone and quest sometimes feels like it was designed in a vacuum. You may be questing alongside a Daedric dog one minute, getting attacked by a massive dragon the next, to be followed by a reenactment of the Hangover movie right after. It felt like a kitchen sink with everyone’s own sometimes well-crafted but inconsistent creations inside. Having a more specialized team might have kept the staff working with their best skills, to a more quality product. The relatively short runway to the same level of control that the developers have has been a powder keg for a bustling community though, and modifications and additions have been crafted by players as early as 2002. There exists a complete rebuild of Daggerfall in the Unity engine. Supporting all sorts of graphical enhancement options and room for modification, this could breathe new life into the most ambitious entry to the series. The detail and lengths fans have gone to in keeping the dream alive is nothing short of inspiring. The modification community is both a testament to the undying love gamers have for the series, but it is also hard proof that they want so much more. From projects that add missing survival mechanics to Skyrim, to bringing completely new lands and campaigns to the game like Elsweyr; from creating and making hundreds of brand new spells available, to rebuilding Morrowind and Oblivion into the latest engine from the ground up. Let alone the truly daunting recreation of the entire continent of Tamriel into one game world, including the Iliac Bay as featured in Daggerfall, with a reimagined Orsinium, High Rock and Hammerfell. Truly inspirational, and easily mistakable for an official game release. Given the same tools the developers at Bethesda use, the modding community seems to be able to pinpoint our desires more accurately than the creators themselves. In a strange twist of expectations, the Elder Scrolls titles are becoming more and more like platforms for community content rather than games themselves, and with the scope of mods ranging from minor tweaks to massive overhauls available, it’s coming to a point where fans are openly anticipating that the community will fix the problems with the series, rather than the game’s actual developers. With free, community-made content eclipsing the work that inspired it, this begs the question, “What could Bethesda possibly do now that would impress audiences more than the content the fans are creating themselves?” And in the longest gap we’ve experienced in the mainline series to date, they have yet to answer. "...He should act like those prudent archers, who, when the target they are aiming at seems too far off, aware of the capacity of their bow, set their sight a good deal higher than the desired target, not to reach such a height with their arrow but rather to be able, with the help of aiming high, to reach their target." - Niccolò Machiavelli A quote alluded to by Julian LeFay in our interview, it resonated with me. What the Elder Scrolls accomplished in improving technology and presentation, it lessened in scope and ambition. I listened as one of its most influential creators talked about the big plans for the series that never came to fruition, and I peered through the early design documents of Morrowind which showed a massive, sprawling map of all of Morrowind, not just the island that became its final setting. Each segment in this grid features a combination of tailor-made locations and procedurally generated wilderness, spanning over 12 square miles each. You heard right - the entire map of Vvardenfell would have fit into just one of these squares. Not only would the world have been incredibly expansive, but would have included much larger cities, more dungeons and activities to take on, and a conflict between all five Great Houses of Morrowind, allowing the player to join any of them. With terrain maps featuring highlands, lowlands, swamps and forests, with Vvardenfell likely being reserved as a dangerous volcanic location for later game events. This seems like the natural progression from Daggerfall that many of us longed for. A combination of highly detailed and handcrafted environments in-between massive wilderness - the best of both worlds. What we eventually got in Morrowind, though fantastic and it remains one of the best RPGs ever made, was the first step to where we are now in the series. It was at this point when the intention shifted from letting the player decide their fate, to guiding them toward a more narrow destination. Morrowind isn't a bad game, but the changes it made to the formula only became stronger with each successive entry, eventually leading to the loss of what I found most engaging about the series: the immersive and magical quality of The Elder Scrolls. Where Skyrim may have aimed for the foothills and hit its target, Daggerfall had its eyes dead-set on the stars. And though missing its mark, it left an impact whose aftershock resounds even today. From everything I’ve experienced throughout playing the entire franchise, to all that I’ve read, listened to and watched, it seems to me that modern Bethesda is trying their best to make the most enjoyable game possible for the widest audience that will have it. And based on the immense success the company has seen over the years, I’d say Todd Howard and the team have done everything they were hired to do, and more. But it’s also clear whatever grand vision the creators of the series had those decades ago has been progressively walked back with every entry. So it's inevitable that in the years that follow, newer, fresher and more ambitious games will try to take the crown of RPGs. Such as the The Witcher 3, made for the same budget as Skyrim, in a world three times the size, effectively surpassing it in terms of atmosphere, compelling storytelling and breathtaking environments. Though many NPCs and buildings were less interactive, the writing and quest design were top-notch. And unlike many of the bland and forgettable quests in the Elder Scrolls series, The Witcher 3 managed to make just about every main and side quest fascinating. The tools used to create games have become easier to use and more powerful than ever, but the canvas on which to paint them has become smaller with each coming year. The question then becomes, how can you speak reason to a business venture that has been nothing but successful in their changes and decisions? Skyrim is the single best-selling RPG of all time. What could be wrong with that? My argument is that mass success and appeal can only, by definition, remove rough or offending edges, to become a well-crafted but mediocre product, with the aim of appealing to precisely the most widespread and average audience possible. You can’t make it too deep, or too shallow. You can’t challenge your audience too much, or dumb it down too far. And that’s not just being cynical. Think of all the greatest TV shows, movies or novels you’ve enjoyed over the past decade. If the Big Bang Theory, American Idol, the Transformers movies, or Fifty Shades of Grey aren’t on your list, then perhaps you agree with me that overall quality doesn’t exactly equate to mass popularity - which is what each of these achieved in excess. Skyrim shed its deeper and less intuitive mechanics, and shaved away the travails and rough edges the series was known for. You can never really fail, you can never get trapped, you can never get lost. So without failure or occasional frustration, what does it truly mean to succeed? Even the most recent Elder Scrolls games are by no objective metric, poor ones. But the decline of ambition and its narrowing of features trend toward simplicity and ease of play rather than inventing new mechanics and ways to engage the player. It has strayed from one of the deepest fantasy life simulators ever created toward a fun, but increasingly shallow story-driven action adventure game that dabbles in role-playing. But this brings up the unfortunate truth about a series that so many gamers from diverse backgrounds enjoy. Everyone scribes their own perfect Elder Scrolls. No amount of features added or taken away can eliminate the fact that no game will satisfy everyone. What I want for the series is likely different from others'. Your perfect Elder Scrolls game might be one I wouldn’t give a second glance at -- and that’s okay. Maybe Bethesda has taken much of the criticism of their recent games to heart and will blow us away once again with their next offering. Or maybe, someone from the community or another developer will rise to the opportunity to fill the void. Perhaps we will have to look for our ideal role-playing game elsewhere. If you made it this far, you clearly have an investment in The Elder Scrolls games or at least enjoyed my thoughts and analysis of them, so why don’t you share your thoughts about the evolution of the series in the comments? This was easily the biggest and most ambitious video I’ve done to date, so if you’d like to see more content of this caliber, please subscribe and consider checking out my Patreon to help support my work. A huge thank-you to my Patrons whose generosity and patience allow me to take on massive projects like these. And as always, thank you for watching!

Channel: Indigo Gaming

Views: 3,109,614

Keywords: elder scrolls documentary, the elder scrolls, daggerfall documentary, complete elder scrolls history, elder scrolls history, elder scrolls, skyrim documentary, history of the elder scrolls, the elder scrolls retrospective, elder scrolls online, the elder scrolls online, tes history, daggerfall history, elder scrolls arena daggerfall, daggerfall skyrim, the elder scrolls arena, daggerfall, skyrim, the elder scrolls retro, redguard, oblivion, morrowind, beyond skyrim, battlespire

Id: 46gaz6veVNQ

Length: 78min 13sec (4693 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 25 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Rubber_Duckie_]

Man I loved the praise he gave to Daggerfall. I felt like so many started out on Morrowind but my first was Daggerfall, and there was truly nothing like it at the time. Hell there still isn't to this day.

Man that gave my goosebumps.

That creaking door noise followed by the "Rawr" at 13:50 brings back horrifying memories. That used to scare the shit out of me.

[u/That2RandomRedditor]

He brings up some interesting points, and I feel sorry for him that he dislikes the direction the series took after Daggerfall, but there’s definitely a reason why they did what they did. Procedural generation wasn’t (and still isn’t) good enough to make procedurally generated areas feel natural or even exciting. Sure, it increases the believability of the world, but it essentially forces excessive fast travel and discourages discovering new locations yourself. It ends up making the world feel more like a game than with a smaller, custom built map.

I agree with him about the points on character creation though, the dumbing down of that goes against what an RPG is supposed to be, what Bethesda are doing is slowly turning TES into yet another mediocre ‘open world’ adventure game which is not actually ‘open world’ because it forces you to go through a linear sequence of events to progress a story.

[u/unfoldgames_]

I so hope they would get TES6 right. I’ve been waiting for it so long.

[u/Sushi2k]

I enjoyed this video. It's obvious that the Elder Scrolls is a game for the masses now and there's no going back but I don't really think that is a bad thing. The whole time I was watching, I could hear what I interpreted as disdain for every game after Daggerfall in his voice. Like "Morrowind was amazing, and one of the greatest RPGs ever, but its not Daggerfall." It really did seem like everytime he finished praising aspects of a game, he'd go back to talking about how great Daggerfall was. I get it, Daggerfall was massive. However, I don't think we'll ever get another one, the technology would never allow it. Not to mention how tedious most people would find it today.

I just hope Elder Scrolls VI doesn't shed as much feature wise as Skyrim did from Oblivion. Personally, my sweet spot is somewhere between Oblivion and Morrowind. Realistically, from what it sounds like, it'll be dumbed down again. That clip he had of Emril's(?) story conference was really telling when he mentioned basically, there are 4 buttons so lets only have 4 conversation options. I'm sure even if it is, I'll end up sinking 1000+ hours into it because Bethesda knows how to make a playground for me (and many others) to play in.

When he was talking about survival mechanics in Skyrim, I think it's clear that people don't like them. Even when they are minor like in Red Dead 2, people don't like bars they have to keep full.

I'll also mention that I couldn't help but laugh when he showed The Witcher 3. Like its a great game with a great story but it doesn't have the playtime longevity that the Elder Scroll games have imo.

[u/Balketh]

I hadn't seen this before! Thank you for posting.

As a long time fan of the Elder Scrolls, one depressed by the utter decline of the series in favour of accessibility through removal of choice, I was wondering what was going wrong, and this doco highlights the issue quite clearly.

It is, almost in its entirety I think, Todd Howard's reductionist game dev philosophy of 'what don't we need' that has poisoned every game he's touched, since Redguard. This can't be overstated, and is no clearer than the ultimate condensation and the entire failure of Fallout 76 reducing even the choice of where you aim your meaningless number-launcher (with a varied skin) via an auto-aiming VATS system.

I'd stack everything I own on the gamble of an Elder Scrolls game with even a tenth the depth and complexity (and a shittonne more polish and bugfixing) of Daggerfall. Spend even ONE game cycle adding again; listen to fans instead of blatantly ignoring them, and 'shoot for the stars' again as it were. Go back to the time in Morrowind's development when you had no fear of profit or the market, because failure would have only meant 'ah well, we close doors and move on', and would mean even less now with the behemoth that the company is - when they went all out because 'if we don't, we're out'. I know it to be true that if they did even one game like this in the series now, it'd be an industry-shattering classic in a heartbeat, even if most of its mechanics were janky flops. If Skyrim was radically successful in world-shattering ways, think of what a game with depth might be!

Give choice back to the players. That's what made the Elder Scrolls amazing to begin with.

[u/AspiringMILF]

this looks promising gonna watch it later when i have time. good quality of the voiceover in the first minute hope it is consistent with the rest of the video.

[u/[deleted]]

Good video, but despite what some people would like out of the series, Skyrim still offers one of the greatest, if not the greatest immersive RPG exploration experiences in all of gaming history. And say what you will about "dumbing down" the formula, I think Skyrim has a certain fluidity and accessibility that allows almost anyone to just pick it up and slowly begin to master it. I have more friends than I can fit on one hand that exclusively play Madden games or COD, yet still love Skyrim. This can partly be attributed to "dumbing down" the experience, but let's be real, no one liked the persuasion system in oblivion. And having the choice to fast travel in Skyrim (and being able to choose not to use it) is better than just straight up not having the option like in Morrowind. Skyrim is an improvement in nearly every front, in my opinion, including quest design. I swear, 95% of Morrowind's quests are absolutely boring fetch quests with no depth. Especially the guild quests, sometimes aptly named 'chores'. The only reason they're fun is because of Morrowind's awesome approach to giving the player options in how to deal with developing situations. For example, you can cast a spell and blind the fucker and steal the thing you have to steal, instead of killing him. Or turn invisible, it's your choice. But at face value, disregarding the gameplay choices you make, the quests are pathetic in comparison to Skyrim.

I think the perfect game would be to take Skyrim's entire design philosophy and instill within it the feeling of player freedom and individual power we got from Morrowind. If they delivered on that for the Elder Scrolls 6 (assuming it's not completely fucking broken) then there's nothing more I could ask for. I just want a fantasy game that I feel like I can get lost in and forget about the world for an hour or two, and no game has ever done that better than Skyrim, not even close.

[u/aan8993uun]

My comment on this video from when it first came out stands out more than ever:

The Antithesis to NoClip's Fallout76/Bethsoft videos.

Indigo gives his works a lot of love and passion. His enthusiasm and depth is admirable, and this video is a fine example.