The Elder Scrolls Online: Blackwood
The Elder Scrolls Online: Blackwood takes us back to Oblivion, and forwards to PS5
You have the choice to play any way you want, and explore in any order you want.
Mehrunes Dagon isn’t just the Elder Scrolls’ community’s favourite Daedric prince, he’s creative director Rich Lambert’s too. In fact, the original The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion was the first game in the series he worked on. “It’s kind of like [going] full circle for me,” says Lambert. “It’s something I’m very excited about.”
The Elder Scrolls Online takes place hundreds of years before the main series, so it makes sense for an ancient threat such as Dagon to take centre stage. “The story is centred around a sort of deal with the devil. […] It takes place about 800 years before [Oblivion’s] events,” Lambert says, teasing how what starts as a “murder mystery” will spiral into a much deeper plot.
Because the main games have such deep lore, there’s plenty of material for the devs to work with, though series creator Todd Howard makes sure some mysteries remain just that. “There are some sacred cows in the Elder Scrolls lore that we will never really dig into or divulge,” says Lambert, frankly. After all, you want to leave a little bit of mystery.
Blackwood kicks off the Gates Of Oblivion storyline, but it’ll be far from one-and-done. Thanks to the success of the Dark Heart Of Skyrim, the “year-long adventure” that kicked off with The Elder Scrolls Online: Greymoor, ZeniMax Online Media is committed to continuing the structure. Quarterly updates will keep the plot unfurling all the way through to the next major update.
ACCESS ALL AREAS
You may have noticed we’ve avoided using the word ‘expansion’. That’s because Lambert’s keen to move away from that terminology. The studio views these updates as individual chapters, and want to emphasise that every new story is for everyone, whether veterans or new players. Pick up and play, and your character can begin with Blackwood’s Gates Of Oblivion just as easily as they can start with the quests in Greymoor, Elsweyr, Morrowind, or Summerset. This folds into the new tutorial, which will now end by asking you to choose which story you want to tackle first.
It’s an approach that continues to set The Elder Scrolls Online apart from the competition, and carries the spirit of the main series. If everyone had felt like they couldn’t play Skyrim until they’d ploughed through the previous four games, the fantasy RPG would doubtless not be the behemoth it is now. “You have the choice to play any way you want, and explore in any order you want, and you don’t have to grind through older content to get to newer content,” says Lambert.
To assist solo players, Blackwood is adding companions. These NPCs will help them, and get them used to working as part of a team before diving into higherlevel missions and stories. Once they’re unlocked, companions can be summoned to your side whenever you like, and you can customise them (and don’t worry, they won’t steal your XP). A rapport system means they can grow to like or dislike the way you act, and you can level them up to level 20 if you’re a true completionist.
CHARTING COURSE
Alongside the 8 June release, the whole of The Elder Scrolls Online will arrive on PS5 for the first time as a free upgrade. “It’s a massive leap forward,” says Lambert. “It’s a true next-gen experience.” Visually it sports two modes at launch, as we’ve come to expect these days – Performance
mode runs at 1440p/60fps, and Fidelity mode hits true 4K at 30fps. Draw distance has been almost doubled and hi-res textures have been added, as well as improvements to shadows, reflections, depth of field, rendering… the works, basically. Of course loading times are getting a big boost, with Lambert saying in many cases waits have been cut in half.
It’ll make exploring an area we last saw on PS3 transformative, to say the least. Bringing up a map of Tamriel, Lambert walks us through the areas that appeared in the base game, and through what area updates have added over time. Coloured circles now cover most of the map, and Blackwood fills in a big spot. “I don’t know if we went into it thinking ‘now is the right time to do it’,” says Lambert, when we ask why the devs are returning Oblivion’s lore. “More it was, ‘This is kind of the right story we want to tell compared to the other stories we’ve told previously.’” Still, we can’t help wondering where they’ll go when that whole map is fully coloured by TESO. It might be sooner than you think. TESO: Blackwood portals over to the PS4 and PS5 realm on 8 June.