New Elder Scrolls Online Screens Emerge

[synobal]

Art style looks remarkably boring, but I do like the recreation of Classic TES locations.

 

[Seneschal]

Online, off-radar.

Seriously, though, does every MMO these days have to look like a Dreamworks film? There are no EDGES in these screenshots! No grit! No detailwork smaller than a person's thumb!

It's the same problem SWTOR had - like Star Wars, Elder Scrolls games have a definite feel to the artwork - and Playmobil ain't it. Compare the snowy Skyrim-esque screenshot to anything from Skyrim, for instance - the differences are immediate and glaringly obvious. Everything's rounder, smoother, dinkier. Sure, you can say it's stylized - but it's stylized in (in my opinion) the wrong way. Elder Scrolls games are about immersing yourself in the world. This? Looks like it's about immersing yourself in the hotbar.

That's not to say that different art styles are bad - but this one's definitely not overtly good. It just looks like an Elder Scrolls-themed version of Amalur - and I'd had enough of Amalur (and by extension WoW, SWTOR, WAR, and half a dozen other bloom-and-bevel-'em-ups) by the time I reached the swamp region.

(Yes, I'm aware I'm exaggerating somewhat; also that Oblivion had a penchant for very smooth edges, especially on stonework. I much prefer Morrowind's and Skyrim's art styles, though)

I don't think you're exaggerating that much, especially if we take all the Korean MMOs and file them under "stylized, clean, with dinky details." They all have the same tone, if not the same style. I've always wondered whether there's an inherent limitation in visual design of a large online game that makes everything look 8 years out of date and suited for ages 5 and above, or do the designers spontaneously grow a brain tumour where their imagination should be. Maybe it's a Blizzard-concocted curse. Either way, Guild Wars 2 seems to be averting the trend a little.

 

[Gennadios]

WoW might be pretty dry on ideas by now, but you can still tell what each area's story and theme are. I dare you to do the same for Guild Wars 2.

It's really not all that hard, read the flavor text on the various hearts and do a couple of dynamic events and you get a pretty good idea of what the major players in the region are trying to accomplish.

In addition to that, Guild Wars 2 has 2 at the end of it. Meaning it's a sequel. Won't help people unfamiliar with the original, but there's a heaping ton of lore all over the place. Familiar towns and temples that have since fallen into ruin, grave stones of henchmen and famous NPCs and so on.

What GW2 did was assume that the vast majority of players don't care and just made that stuff subtle. The only way to get a wall of text to explain what you're seeing is to check the wiki, which really isn't that different from being whacked over the head with a 3 paragraph quest log.

 

[lancar]

I don't suppose we can pray to whatever Deadra might be listening to make Bethesda stop producing this?

Seriously, enough with the goddamn MMO's! Take those art assets, spruce them up and recycle them into the next singleplayer Elder Scrolls instead. I don't want more generic MMO's to die brutally at WoW's onslaught, I don't want to see Bethesda waste truckloads of money on a game that'll never achieve the popularity or success of the other TES games, and I certainly DON'T WANT TO PLAY IT!

For the love of god, please stop!

 

[KeyMaster45]

Okay guys real funny. Now put the Guild Wars 2 screen shots away and give us the actual TES online screen shots.

 

[TheSapphireKnight]

Sigh, I can't stand your typical MMO gameplay so right from the beginning I didn't care. Am I against multiplayer in general for TES? No but not in MMO form.

I would absolutely love to run around and explore a territory or two(hopefully all of Tamriel eventually) with one or MAYBE two of my buddies. I would never want to run around with strangers but with two friends I know I can't think of anything better than exploring a TES with a few friends.

 

[karoliso]

And story is what keeps people playing your MMO. It can even be a silly story like that of WoW, but it works.

I'll jump in here and disagree. You do not need to cram in a story into an MMO for people to play it. In fact, most MMO's have horrible stories, but that does not stop millions of people from playing them. Why? It's because the two main reasons why people play MMO's are gameplay and social interactions.

In these games, people forge their own stories by interacting with people within the game. I put forward that it's emergent narratives and/or gameplay that make MMO's special, not stories and lore written by the developers.

My most memorable moments playing MMO's like LOTRO, Lineage 2 and Guild Wars 2, were ones involving interactions with people. Stories of Guild feuds, traitors and friendships were all by-products of giving us (the players) a set of tools and letting us experiment within the boundaries set by the game.

Case in point: http://www.facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1220094&p=38145935&viewfull=1#post38145935

 

[Techno Destructo]

I think I'll follow Yahtzee's view on a game and expect it to be shit. If it's not, then I can at least be surprised when it doesn't make my hard drive want to hurl itself into the closest sharp object around.

 

[lacktheknack]

I think this game could use a new "Warp In The West" to spice things up. As an added bonus a "Warp In The West" would work very well in an online game, what with it being the only kind of even to drop-kick continuity off the planet and make every player choice contribute to the madness.

I'd play it if it did that.

 

[Elberik]

There's admittedly not much to see here and if it wasn't for the presence of the Ordinator, the Centurion Sphere and the guy in the Nord helmet, they'd be entirely indistinguishable from just about every other generic fantasy MMO/RPG on the market.

That's because Elder Scrolls is generic fantasy, just like Halo is generic SciFi and CoD is generic FPS. It's the IP, the logo, that matters. Like t-shirts: T-shirt are identical in structure & functionality, all that matters is what is printed on them.

Yeah... no.

Especially not with SciFi. You can't stick the Pillar of Autumn, the Enterprise, the Millennium Falcon, and the Litany of Fury next to one another and pretend that they're "all the same." Sci Fi involves a lot more than just a logo. And no one in their right mind can take Mass Effect, Halo, and Dead Space, look at all three games and say they're all the same with a different logo on the cover.

*had to look up what the Litany of Fury was*
I am taking about the visuals, since all we have are pictures. Those ships you listed, they are all big ships (i would never put the Millennium Falcon next to the Pillar of Autumn, maybe a Star Destroyer though). Mass Effect and Halo are different types of games, obviously. It's the visuals, you could put Issac Clarke next to Commander Shepherd & there'd be no evidence to say they were from different universes. The Normandy could buzz DS9 & no one would think it out of place unless they had previous knowledge of Mass Effect & Star Trek lore.

The Elder Scrolls is a generic fantasy setting. Medieval era tech, dragons, magic, & some humanoid and/or bestial creatures from Celtic/Gaelic/Scandinavian folklore.

Of course, where this started was about substance and structure, not just visual aesthetics. So, while you're right, you could stick the Normandy next to DS9 and say it looks the part, the underlying philosophy of the settings are incompatible, even with the Normandy basically being a reskinned Defiant.

Even the Shepard/Clarke thing sort of underlines the issue, both at a visual and a thematic level. Shepard is (usually) presented with sleek top of the line military hardware, everything has a circular aesthetic to it. It's a bit worn, but it's still high end. That aesthetic carries over into the setting as a whole.

Clarke in contrast was aesthetically designed to look like, well, power tools. That's the fundamental aesthetic, which informs most of Dead Space's visual identity. The problem is, of course, that that fundamentally goes deeper as well.

The real disparity between the settings is that Mass Effect is a world where the designated hero comes along to save you, while Dead Space is a world where everyone dies horribly. You can stick them next to one another and say "sure, they could be in the same universe", but the fundamental identities of their universes are incompatible.

My issue was in regards to:

There's admittedly not much to see here and if it wasn't for the presence of the Ordinator, the Centurion Sphere and the guy in the Nord helmet, they'd be entirely indistinguishable from just about every other generic fantasy MMO/RPG on the market.

All we have right now are pictures. Still images out of context. The same things we originally had for every single video game ever made. It's a bit early to be making remarks on whether or not a game will be innovative or at the very least "good". Skyrim looks like generic fantasy, same as Mass Effect looks like generic SciFi. It's not until you actually play them that you can make an assessment.

 

[Saegrim]

I still want to know more about the gameplay. I could care less about the screenshots-gimme gameplay details. Is it gonna be traditional Elder Scrolls based, or am I going to be playing with a hotkey piano and grinding for days on end?
If they go traditional Elder Scrolls based but also put in something like Rifts in Rift, and the player base has to go to war with Daedra or something, I'd fork over cash for it.

 

[oldirtymongrrel]

I'm not sure, I will give it a go but I'm not into MMOs,I would rather they got started with a Elder Scrolls 6 with co-op, a friend can play as a merc. Just hope this doesn't damage the series.

 

[scw55]

This is folly, in my opionion, since story and gameplay should not be kept in seperate areas of the game (Hello Guild Wars 2!) but instead should be a union.

WoW might be pretty dry on ideas by now, but you can still tell what each area's story and theme are. I dare you to do the same for Guild Wars 2.

Plains of Ashford; Defending against the Flame Legion and Undead
Queensdale; Defending against Bandits
Caledon Forest; Defending Against the Nightmare Countrt
Metrica Province; Defending Against the Inquisition
Wayfarer Foothills; Defending against the Sons of Svanir
Diessa Plateau; Defending against the human sepratists
Kessex Hills; Defending against Centaurs and Bandits
Brisban Wildlands; Defending against the Inquisition, Nightmare court and bandits
Snowden Drifts; Defending against Sons of Svanir
.
.
.
.
Then when you get to the straights of devastation, narrative rears its head and from then on your have dynamic events where you are trying to claim the land.

Why must you get to 65 to get to this point? Because it's an MMO. You can't spread intense narrative across 80 levels. So they focus on the last 15. There are no quests at all at this level and your exp gain must come from exploration or participating in the assault.

Don't think the zones in WoW had a strong narrative for each zone. It was the narrative which I listed above in GW2's. A lot of defending against certain factions. What WoW had was violent distinctions in aesthetics for each zones. WoW came from the land of whackiness; TBC. Guild Wars 2 is more grounded in realism with regards to their landscapes (if you ignore giant crystals).

What will kill TESO is awful game play. You have many games now that offer large Co-Op which allows you to play with a small community of friends and the gameplay is good. Why would you want to play an MMO with worse gameplay and play with people who you don't want to play with?

Having a subfee won't help either.

 

[Starke]

My issue was in regards to:

There's admittedly not much to see here and if it wasn't for the presence of the Ordinator, the Centurion Sphere and the guy in the Nord helmet, they'd be entirely indistinguishable from just about every other generic fantasy MMO/RPG on the market.

All we have right now are pictures. Still images out of context. The same things we originally had for every single video game ever made. It's a bit early to be making remarks on whether or not a game will be innovative or at the very least "good". Skyrim looks like generic fantasy, same as Mass Effect looks like generic SciFi. It's not until you actually play them that you can make an assessment.

My issue was in regards to:

That's because Elder Scrolls is generic fantasy, just like Halo is generic SciFi and CoD is generic FPS. It's the IP, the logo, that matters. Like t-shirts: T-shirt are identical in structure & functionality, all that matters is what is printed on them.

Now, I'll grant you that TESO does look suspiciously like some bog standard fantasy MMO, and that's a serious cause for concern. Especially given that there are design elements that have been abandoned or mutilated in those screenshots. But, what I was responding to was that all fantasy, all scifi and all shooters were just "labels on a t-shirt," they're really not.

 

[Li Mu]

That's not to say that these screens aren't reasonably pretty, or that I think The Elder Scrolls Online will be a sub-par game. I just hope that Bethesda is able to do something more with it than re-hash the previous games in a contrived three-way conflict.

I really don't understand why Escapist writers are struggling with the fact that Bethesda are NOT making this game. Zenimax Online Studios are.
Pretty much every article about this game has talked about Bethesda being the ones who are making this game.

It would be the same as saying that Half Life; Opposing Force was made by Valve, or that Call of Duty was made by Activision, or that Fable 3 was developed by Microsoft.

Come on guys, you're supposed to be Games Journalists, you should surely know and understand the difference between a developer and a publisher.

Here's an example; Dawn of War 2 is a great game. It was 'developed' by Relic Entertainment. Now just to clear up any confusion; developers are the people who are making the game. They're the ones who put together all the coding and pretty artwork and make the whole thing run.

Dawn of War 2 was 'published' by THQ. This means that THQ are in charge of funding the game, distributing, localization and advertising it. (And in EA's case, rush the thing out the door before it's finished)

Oddly, nobody gets confused about Dawn of War 2. Everyone knows that Relic rocks as a dev and that THQ are pretty good when it comes to publishing. So why you're all struggling with TOS;OL is beyond me. But perhaps I should clarify a little more.

So in this specific case, Bethesda are allowing Zenimax to use their intellectual property, giving them some vast sums of money and will be distributing the game.

Zenimax are the ones 'developing' the whole game. See, they 'develop' and that's why we call them 'developers'. Funny that, eh?

 

[Dandark]

I don't suppose we can pray to whatever Deadra might be listening to make Bethesda stop producing this?

Seriously, enough with the goddamn MMO's! Take those art assets, spruce them up and recycle them into the next singleplayer Elder Scrolls instead. I don't want more generic MMO's to die brutally at WoW's onslaught, I don't want to see Bethesda waste truckloads of money on a game that'll never achieve the popularity or success of the other TES games, and I certainly DON'T WANT TO PLAY IT!

For the love of god, please stop!

Bethesda are not making this, they have nothing to do with this, it's Zenimax online who is doing this, they are owned by Zenimax, the same company who owns Bethesda.

AW Yeah!

Who's prepared for another utter failure of a shitty hot-key MMO?

I know I am!

I could be wrong but from my understanding of what a "hot key" mmo is, this isn't one as they scrapped that to go with a new combat system.


OT: I seem to be in the minority who actually likes the look of this =/
It isn't getting my that excited but it does look like it could be fun and im happy enough with the art style, if they can make the character building and gameplay fun and interesting then I would enjoy this.

I still won't touch it untill they get rid of the subscription fee though.

 

[evilneko]

There's admittedly not much to see here and if it wasn't for the presence of the Ordinator, the Centurion Sphere and the guy in the Nord helmet, they'd be entirely indistinguishable from just about every other generic fantasy MMO/RPG on the market.

Par for the course for TES. Vanilla be thy name. Maybe with a few sprinkles here and there, but vanilla nonetheless.

 

[ViciousTide]

UMM, i don't see the MMO aspect in these screenshots, they look like Skyrim to me.

Unless you have 16 V 16 in real time battle like War of Roses is doing, you won't be creating a new genre in the MMO sphere. I want to issue a general command/order to 1000 players, and they try to achieve this order and then add additional troops to the battle or order to fire arrows from those 200 players.

You could make a 500 V 500 MMO game with 3D spheres with a sword and arrow and minecraft graphics, and it would be the best most funniest game around.

Focus on the Human Network/ MMO Game play aspects. We have felt souless for the last 3 RPGs, and no guilt shooting an arrow to the NPC's knee, then shouting him off the ledge. I want to here someone shouting back, " NOOOO!!".

 

[kodra]

Based on the various articles circulating the blogosphere from folks who have actually played a early version of the game, cries of this being "Just a WoW Clone" seem very similar to all of the cries that "Half Life is just another DOOM clone".

 

[Rblade]

that dremora looks bad ass.

other then that you can't really say anything about this aside from the fact that making a MMO is risky business no matter how you spin it.

The thing this game has going for it over say, TOR, is that it makes much more sense to have a huge amount of high power fantasy hero's running around. Aswell as having a credible source of powerfull but lore approved enemies because of stuff like the deadra and dragons being a thing. So you won't have just NPC's or stuff you pull out of your collective arse.
In that regard it is more on a similar ground as guild wars and WoW.

add to that a gigantic fanbase and I wouldn't write this off