State of the Game Address: What the Elder Scrolls Series Should Fix Before Becoming an MMO

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Before gamers have even fully had the chance to plunder the depths of Skryim’s dungeons and caves, not to mention the new places and quests added in the DawnGuard expansion, Bethesda has the news of an Elder Scrolls MMO like an arrow into the knees of gamers everywhere. Though this may come as a surprise to some people, the full name of Skyrim is Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. The five is there because their were 4 games before it, it’s not just like, you know, a number. The Elder Scrolls universe is rather large and includes much more than the land of the Nords, and gamers have been charging and battling in it’s different areas that include all of the continent of Tamreil,  and more. So the universe of Elder Scrolls is certainly large enough to contain an MMO and give players plenty to see and do, but I feel there are a few things that Bethesda will need to add to the magic formula before they go attempting to clash swords with the giants World of Warcraft and Knights of the Old Republic.

 

Glitch Scrolls V: Glitchrim.

See what I did there? I made a reference to how many glitches there are in Skyrim. From quests not loading or completing successfully, to people floating in the air mysteriously, to just pretty much all manner of craziness, this all has to be worked out by Bethesda before they brave the new world of MMO-ville. I’m sure Bethesda is working on a new engine for their new series, but I wouldn’t be so worried if pretty much ALL games made by Bethesda have issues with bugs and glitches. Don’t get me wrong, Elder Scrolls and Fallout series are games that I will always sink hundreds of hours in to and enjoy immensely, but the possibility of glitches increase ten billion fold when you include massive numbers of players questing, killing, and looting all in one area at one time. Since this is a big complaint with gamers everywhere on the series, I’m sure this is a top priority to fix for Bethesda.

 

Clunktastic Combat

Games like the Assassin’s Creed series do a fantastic job of showing off how to create compelling and epic sword combat, but the Elder Scrolls has always seemed a little clunky and slow in comparison. While there have certainly been improvements in the combat system since ESIII: Morrowind and ESIV: Oblivion, the combat still should take a cue from other series and learn to speed and style up a bit. MMO combat will be between masses of creatures and other players (hopefully) and that is the biggest failing to me in Skyrim’s combat system. Any time you are fighting multiple enemies it can become so hectic that its easy to lose just because of weird hit detection and limitations of field of view. I predict that combat will change drastically before the MMO hits, if only to address problems that gamers have voiced.

 

Magical Dungeon of Repeating

Remember how cool that one dungeon was? You know, the one that looked exactly like ninety percent of all the other dungeons you’ve been in during your bazillion hour quest? Repetitive backgrounds and dungeons have plagued the Elder Scrolls series for a long time now. I understand that when crafting a world as big as Montana you will copy and paste some things to save time and budget, but MMO’s that do this end up burning out players and boring them until the subscriptions start to fly away like dragons in the sky. Bethesda will need to spice things up (and since the MMO will supposedly take place in all of Tamriel they should be able to do this) in order to keep players coming back again and again to quest and kill and pay a monthly fee.

 

All in all, I think Bethesda knows exactly what to do to create a game that will draw in players and wow them and their questing buddies together just as they did in singe player outings in their past games. I have little nit picks of coarse, but this company has yet to put on a product that hasn’t invaded my life and replaced it with a dark fantasy epic that I can never really let go of.

 

 

About author

Brandon

Collector of retro video games, blogger of blogs, and caster of pods. I'm a resident of Northeast Mississippi where I live with my wife and hold court as the Chief Video Game consultant for the Just us Geeks empire.

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