Out of the mists of our cursed internet connection, a figure with a bird perched upon his shoulder emerges. It’s ZeniMax’s creative director Rich Lambert – and that avian is his African Grey parrot Poppy. Perhaps an irregular set up for an interview, it’s nothing compared to the strangeness that will ensue this June.
Pitched as ‘Elder Scrolls meets cosmic horror,’ Lambert explains why the team chose to move in this direction for the MMORPG’s upcoming expansion.
“One of the things we always make sure of is we want it to feel very different,” he begins. “If we can make it feel different than anything we’ve ever done before, that’s obviously a huge thing. But it has to feel very different than the thing we just did. If we didn’t do that, then there’d be lots of fatigue and players would get bored.”
Poppy chirps approvingly.
“Thanks, Poppy. She’s in here agreeing with me all the way,” Lambert quips before continuing, “So when we initially kind of stumbled upon the idea of Hermaeus Mora, that was really kind of like this huge differentiator – like ‘Holy cow! This is eldritch horror!’ […] How do we make that accessible in ESO, [and] what kind of stories can we tell?”
Hermaeus Mora is a Daedric Prince known for having various otherworldly appendages stuck into many pies throughout Tamriel’s history. The long tail of the Elder Scrolls’ timeline leaves key moments open to interpretation, and Lambert argues this aspect makes it particularly well suited to telling tales of mind-bending strangeness.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der April 2023-Ausgabe von PLAY Magazine UK.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent ? Anmelden
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der April 2023-Ausgabe von PLAY Magazine UK.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent? Anmelden
Alone In The Dark: The New Nightmare
Here comes our favourite cartoon character, Daffy Dark
Sleeping Dogs
The PS3 era’s most underrated sandbox
Umurangi Generation VR
Nice to play the Generation game, to play it nice
Tales Of Kenzera: Zau
This year’s 378,992nd metroidvania
Planet Of Lana
Induces a severe case of playja vu
Grounded
Oh no, not another game full of bugs on release
Knights In Tight Spaces
Saturday's Knights all right for fighting. And Sunday's. And Monday's...
Bohemian rhapsody
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II will gallop onto PlayStation 5 later this year
In the ring with Japan's fighting pros
Top players and spectators enjoyed three days of fighting spirit at Evo Japan
Topjobs
Final Fantasy XIV producer and director Naoki Yoshida speaks to Daniella Lucas about what goes into creating new job classes for the MMORPG – from revising old skills through updates to the difficulties of deciding what new ideas to bring to the table