Ever since Game Director Matt Firor announced that Elder Scrolls Online would have a 100% soloable main story, we’ve been wondering just how much this will impact the game’s appeal and approach. Firor spoke with PC Gamer to elaborate on TESO’s format, saying that it was essential to make the story solo in order to establish the player as a hero.
While portions of TESO’s endgame and its PvP experience require grouping, Firor said that the core of the game will be played alone: “The way we do that in Elder Scrolls Online is there are parts of the game that you just do solo and you just do in a story instance. So the main backbone story of the game, which is your interaction with Molag Bal, one of the Daedric princes, you’re the hero in that story, so you experience that only yourself.”
Firor also addressed the team’s decision to eschew the skill-based system seen in newer Bethesda titles in favor of returning to systems seen in earlier Elder Scrolls games. “What we had to do to make it an MMO is to kind of evolve over to the multiplayer side and there are some things that come with that,” he admitted. “Since we have a PVP component to our game, it’s very difficult to make a skill-based game like in Skyrim.”