It’s Been a long time coming. We’ve been very patient, we paid our dues, and we played Skyrim until our fingers bled and our loot bags were full of butterfly wings and Nirnroot. But now, finally, the wait is over. The Elder Scrolls Online has rebranded itself as as The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited and Bethesda has announced a release date for PS4.
Twiddling of thumbs aside, this wait hasn’t necessarily been a bad thing. In addition to the anticipation of waiting more than a year for what is possibly going to be a groundbreaking game for consoles, we are just bursting to see what kind of difference an extra year’s worth of development has made to the game itself.
Chances are you’re already familiar with the general play-style of the Elder Scrolls series you’re basically left to your own devices shortly after completing a series of tutorial steps that familiarise you with the game. After that, you can quite literally do whatever you want, go wherever you want, or even attack whoever you want (expect a large fine and some jail time, though). TESO follows this trend in almost exactly the same way, with a few exceptions. Expect to find all manner of consumables and ingredients on your travels, most of which will be in the boxes and barrels that seem to litter Tamriel’s landscape. Crafting has always been a big part of any Elder Scrolls game and we love that, but it can be a little daunting if you are a new player to the series. You can easily find your inventory full of what seems to be useless junk before you’ve even made it out of the tutorial, but don’t worry as soon as you make your way to your particularfaction’s major cities, you’ll find quest markers that explain how to combine all that junk together to make useful items for your character.
With all of this in mind, it’s easy to fall into the trap of assuming TESO is the next Elder Scrolls game. It isn’t. It’s a standalone game in its own right, although you can draw up similarities to something like Skyrim and even Morrowind, you can’t expect it to feel the same as these classics. It is, at its core, an MMO, not a traditional RPG and it should be treated as such. This is likely to be a good thing, however, as it has a chance of exposing itself to a lot of players that would usually stick to one particular gaming genre.
One of the biggest challenges TESO faces is to break out into a market that is already dominated by a few, but very successful, games, but we have faith. It’s going to be exciting to see just where TESO will place itself amongst PlayStation MMO giants such as Final Fantasy XIV. TESO has the potential to do very well by putting itself out there on consoles. That’s a lot of players that it can appeal to. If Zenimax has spent this last year perfecting the console release, then we all have a lot to look forward to when TESO finally makes it debut on PlayStation 4 in a few months.
Twiddling of thumbs aside, this wait hasn’t necessarily been a bad thing. In addition to the anticipation of waiting more than a year for what is possibly going to be a groundbreaking game for consoles, we are just bursting to see what kind of difference an extra year’s worth of development has made to the game itself.
Chances are you’re already familiar with the general play-style of the Elder Scrolls series you’re basically left to your own devices shortly after completing a series of tutorial steps that familiarise you with the game. After that, you can quite literally do whatever you want, go wherever you want, or even attack whoever you want (expect a large fine and some jail time, though). TESO follows this trend in almost exactly the same way, with a few exceptions. Expect to find all manner of consumables and ingredients on your travels, most of which will be in the boxes and barrels that seem to litter Tamriel’s landscape. Crafting has always been a big part of any Elder Scrolls game and we love that, but it can be a little daunting if you are a new player to the series. You can easily find your inventory full of what seems to be useless junk before you’ve even made it out of the tutorial, but don’t worry as soon as you make your way to your particularfaction’s major cities, you’ll find quest markers that explain how to combine all that junk together to make useful items for your character.
“IT’S EASY TO FALL INTO THE TRAP OF ASSUMING TESO IS THE NEXT ELDER SCROLLS GAME. IT ISN’T”By now, a few of you may have got your hands on the PC version and are getting in some good practice time in preparation for the PS4 release, and unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll be familiar with the four playable classes Dragonknight, Sorcerer, Nightblade and Templar. But as you venture further into the game and inevitably level up, you’ll be able to specialise your character in certain skill paths, one of three for each class. Each specialisation provides you with different skills and spells for your character. Add that to the already vast array of weapon and armour skills available, and you may be spoilt for choice; you’ll have a hard time choosing where to spend those precious skills points each time you level up. Nothing is forever though, and you’ll be able to reset all of these skills should you decide that you want to go in a different direction with your character.
With all of this in mind, it’s easy to fall into the trap of assuming TESO is the next Elder Scrolls game. It isn’t. It’s a standalone game in its own right, although you can draw up similarities to something like Skyrim and even Morrowind, you can’t expect it to feel the same as these classics. It is, at its core, an MMO, not a traditional RPG and it should be treated as such. This is likely to be a good thing, however, as it has a chance of exposing itself to a lot of players that would usually stick to one particular gaming genre.
One of the biggest challenges TESO faces is to break out into a market that is already dominated by a few, but very successful, games, but we have faith. It’s going to be exciting to see just where TESO will place itself amongst PlayStation MMO giants such as Final Fantasy XIV. TESO has the potential to do very well by putting itself out there on consoles. That’s a lot of players that it can appeal to. If Zenimax has spent this last year perfecting the console release, then we all have a lot to look forward to when TESO finally makes it debut on PlayStation 4 in a few months.