Gameplay of The Elder Scrolls series

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The Elder Scrolls are a series of computer role-playing games developed by Bethesda Softworks. The following article illustrates the gameplay techniques used in the series of games, from The Elder Scrolls: Arena to the recent The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.

Contents 1 The Elder Scrolls: Arena 1.1 Development 2 The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall 2.1 Character creation 2.2 Interface 2.3 Combat 3 The Elder Scrolls Legends: Battlespire 4 The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard 5 The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind 5.1 Transportation 5.2 Character creation 5.3 Skill system 5.4 Interface 5.5 Combat 5.6 Free-form design 6 The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion 6.1 Transportation 6.2 Character creation 6.3 Skill system 6.4 Interface 6.5 Combat 7 References

[edit] The Elder Scrolls: Arena

See also: The Elder Scrolls: Arena

[edit] Development

Arena began its development as a gladiator-style arena combat game.^[1][2] Had this concept been followed through to the eventual release, it would have consisted predominantly of the player character voyaging about the land of Tamriel with a band of fighters, fighting your way through local competitions on to regional ones, and eventually on through to the grand championship in the Imperial City.^[2] As development progressed, this initial vision was lost, as RPG elements were tacked on in increasing number to the initial arena combat substructure. The player was allowed to meander about the towns he visited, and later still to raid dungeons with team. Eventually the entire conceptual underpinnings of the game were overhauled, and the game became a full-fledged RPG.^[1] No arena combat game ever ended up being coded, and only fragments of text remain from the initial conceptualizing stages of the game.^[2] In the end, Arena was shipped without any arena combat at all.^[3]

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[edit] The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall

See also: The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall

[edit] Character creation

Daggerfall begins with a menu. The player first chooses a race, sex, next a class, next special abilities, next a face, and a name.^[4][5][6][7] From this point the player chooses their own biography, either through a series of questions, a randomized fast start, or a series of die rolls. Each choice, random value, or assigned dice role, could possibly affect the value of the player character's starting skill levels, attributes, inventory, reputation, affiliation, special abilities, or weaknesses.^[8] From this point on, the player is dropped unconscious into the game world, to be awoken in the secluded cave of Privateer's Hold.^[9]

[edit] Interface

Daggerfall uses a "more or less" mouse-based interface and offers fully customizable hotkeys.^[6] The game offers the player both a 3D and 2D automap; the 3D offering full rotational freedom of movement, the 2D offering merely a topdown view.^[5][6] In contrast to Morrowind, the game offers the player the chance to annotate the map, though some reviewers found the specific mechanisms by which the system operated made the feature pointless.^[6]

[edit] Combat

Attacks may be made and controlled Daggerfall solely through the use of a mouse. A variety of possible attacks handled through a combination of the device's directional and depressionary movements.^[6] There are four possible combinations in all, with the choices offering tradeoffs between hit chance and hit damage.^[5]

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[edit] The Elder Scrolls Legends: Battlespire

See also: The Elder Scrolls Legends: Battlespire

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[edit] The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard

See also: The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard

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[edit] The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

See also: The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

Like previous entries in the series, Morrowind is primarily a first-person RPG, playing from a character's eye view in a 3D environment. Third-person perspective is also included, but has been called "next to impossible" to use for any length of time.^[10] The player controls one character,^[11] though various NPCs may join the character temporarily,^[12] and in the expansions the main character can hire mercenaries as followers.

[edit] Transportation

The decision was made early on in the development of Morrowind to scrap most of Daggerfall's fast-travel system, where players were capable of instantly traveling great distances, to encourage travel by foot.^[13] However, Morrowind retains aspects of Daggerfall's system by way of Silt Striders, great insectlike beasts who provide instantaneous fast-travel between the major towns of Vvardenfell,^[14] teleportation spells,^[15] and various minor ferrymen.^[16][17]

[edit] Character creation

Morrowind begins with the player imprisoned, though in the midst of being set free. A well-received^{[18][10][19][20]} tutorial following the release moves the player through the process of character creation.^[21] The player is successively asked questions by a fellow prisoner, an officer, and a bureaucrat as the player is registered as a free citizen; choosing, in the process, the player character's name, sex, race, birthsign, and class.^[10] These affect the player's starting attributes, skills, and abilities. In a throwback to the Ultima series, the player has a chance to answer a series of moral questions to determine their class.^[10][22][18] To accommodate the successive menus and ease the player into the game, the opening sequence uses extensive scripting, and is one of the few parts of the game to do so.^[23]

A case study by Elisabeth Hayes used Morrowind to study the manifestation of identity through play; its character creation system and open design were aids towards the construction of identity. The character choices of her participants, she wrote, reflected "to a surprising extent how they described their real-life identities and dispositions." Hayes noted a complex and ambiguous relation to combat in Morrowind. Both the subjects of her case study eventually showed willingness to engage in combat, but this was not their primary source of identity, so much as "a means of supporting practices more integral to these identities, a means of gathering great clothes, potion ingredients, exploring new lands, or doing things right."^[24]

[edit] Skill system

The player character's proficiency with a skill is increased either by practice or training. Practice involves performing the specific actions associated with a given trait. Training, a much smaller portion of the game, involves exchanging cash with select NPCs in exchange for skills. To become better with using armor or a type of weapon, the character must be involved in combat using the armor or the weapon. To become better with using magic spells, the character must learn spells and practice casting them. As the player character's skill level increases those actions tied to that skill improve. Weaponry skills (viz. Short Sword, Long Sword, Axe, etc.) are tied to those weapons' chance to hit. Armor skills (viz. Heavy Armor, Light Armor, Unarmored, etc.) are tied to those armor classes defensive strength.

Morrowind, unlike its predecessor Daggerfall, makes a distinction between "abilities" and "skills"; skills being those individual proficiencies in particular schools of magic or with particular armor classes, and abilities being broader proficiencies, such as "strength" and "endurance", which are either tied to important features unconnected to any skill, (viz. Health, Magicka, evasion chance, etc.) or improve the efficiency of a wide variety of skills. Strength, for example, improves the damage of any physical blow dealt by the player character. Abilities, however, are improved only when the player levels up.

The player levels up their character as a whole by leveling up individual skills from their major and minor skill lists — a set determined by their choice of class — a total of ten times. Each time the player levels up their character, they select three attributes to augment as well. The player is better able to augment abilities related to their skill set, as each level gained in a particular skill adds to the multiplier by which the ability is augmented.^{[22][25][26][27]}

This mildly complex reciprocal system was generally praised, with some few exceptions. IGN, though finding the manual's description of the system unclear, found the classes well balanced and well designed for all play styles,^[25] and GameSpot found the system clear and sensible.^[22] PC Gamer, by contrast, found the system unbalanced, with combat privileged over other features.^[11] Computer Gaming World felt the system's privileging of combinations of single-handed combat weapons and shields over double-handed weapons unnecessarily exploitable, but appreciated the freedom offered by the broad skillset and action-dependent leveling.^[19] GameSpy gave strong commendation to the system, stating that "The advancement system makes so much sense that it makes other games, even games set in the D&D world such as Baldur's Gate, look silly by comparison".^[14] One critic felt that Morrowinds system showed signs of inspiration from RuneQuest.^[28] Imbalances between Morrowind's 21 character classes have been noted as well, with mage and thief classes found to be at a disadvantage to fighter classes.^[18]

[edit] Interface

Inventory, local maps, usable spells, and player abilities are accessed and manipulated by way of 4 resizeable windows.^[16][25] The player is able to converse with NPCs using similar resizeable menus containing a main body of text and a sidebar to the right with selectable conversation topics. Words in the main body of text are hyperlinked to related topics, a system that has been commended for its intuitiveness.^[16][29] The text-heavy nature of dialogue was a minor complaint for reviewers of the Xbox version of the game, finding the text more suitable for a PC resolution than an NTSC one.^[30] Game developer Todd Howard has described the game as "very object oriented"^[12] and "object heavy"^[31]; most of the common objects the player encounters, "books, candles, knives, forks", may be rearranged about the gamespace and added to the inventory by the player,^[16][32] and items, once placed, never move or vanish.^[33] Bethesda Softworks, in the interest of furthering game realism, employed what Todd Howard termed "clutter monkeys" for the express purpose of littering the game world with these items.^[31]

The player has a journal which is automatically updated with information from time to time following conversations with NPCs and important developments in the plot, each new entry following all those previous. Though IGN and GamePro commended the general interface for its relative ease of use,^[25][34] the journal was almost universally reviled. The journal was found to quickly become a "muddled mess",^[35] "hundreds of pages long",^[36] without any useful method of organization by quest title or completion level.^[11] Computer Gaming World simply called the feature an "anal-retentive nightmare of confusion", listing it as one of the game's greatest shortcomings.^[19] The system was overhauled in Morrowind's expansion pack Tribunal, allowing the player to sort quests individually and by completion, much to the pleasure of critics.^[37][38]

[edit] Combat

In Morrowind, the simplest attack, a chop, is performed with a left click. The somewhat more complex slash and thrust attacks are performed by a combination of that same generic click with different tappings of the keyboard's directional keys.^[39] Reviewers found little value in choosing amongst the three melee attacks, since each attack variant always gives the same damage value, and an option is available to always use the best attack, an option reviews and strategy guides tended to recommend.^[39][40]

Each weapon possesses a rating determining its strength in each of these areas. A combination of hidden arithmetic modifiers upon each combatant's skills determines whether or not the attack hits. In the original, the player was given no indication of the amount of health left in their enemies, and no indication of the strength of their attacks. Reviewers took the absence badly, wishing for a more developed visible response system.^[39][22][35] Bethesda eventually added enemy health bars in patch 1.1.0605, released one month after Morrowind's initial publication,^[41] and the patch came packaged with Morrowind's expansions and Game of the Year editions.

Combat in Morrowind was generally found to be simple,^[39][19] one reviewer describing it as a "purely hack-and-slash affair",^[36] with others expressing similar feelings.^[19] Questioned for a comparison combat system during the game's development, developer Pete Hines likened Morrowind's system to that of Jedi Knight.^[42] The combat system was poorly received in most quarters, with GameSpot characterizing it as one of the game's major weak points,^[36] and GameSpy devoting the majority of its minor complaints to it.^[35] Electronic Gaming Monthly's Kathleen Sanders saw Morrowind's combat system as one "universally regarded as boring".^[43] On a more favourable note, IGN found tactical tricks emerging from within the game's workings, as particular skills, spells and abilities lent themselves to certain strategies. As an example, IGN noted that a levitating character was well suited to kill melee-capable beasties upon the ground from afar, their numbers being too stupid and enraged to flee from the onslaught.^[39]

[edit] Free-form design

Morrowind, following the tradition established by its predecessors in The Elder Scrolls series,^[44] attempts to establish a completely free-form world, with no constricting boundaries on the player's actions. From the beginning of the game, the player is put in a world where they are left to roam, steal, quest and explore, without necessarily following the main quest.^[11] Lead Designer Ken Rolston, asked prior to Morrowind's release what he thought were the "core, untouchable design elements" of the Elder Scrolls series which "set them apart from other games", responded immediately: "Free-form experience."^[45] In Rolston's view, the game's central plot is a chance to introduce the player to a cross-current of conflicting factions, background themes, and to the characters of the game, rather than the primary focus of the player's experience.^[46] "Every TES game has to let you create the kind of character you want, and then do the things you want. We would never have a TES RPG force you to be a certain character or go down a certain path."^[45]

To allow for this behavior, Morrowind, in addition to creating an extensive main quest, provides detailed discursive quests for a variety of factions, including various guilds, religious organizations and aristocratic houses, in addition to side-quests found by mere exploration.^[47][48] Even the main plot itself may be attacked in a number of directions. There are, in the words of critic Craig Lindey, "a very specific set of central plot points within this main plot. But the plot points are partially ordered: seven high level tasks must be completed, but their constituent sub-tasks...can be accomplished in any order, and this is repeated for the sub-tasks involved in those sub-tasks." The choices the player makes in their performance of these tasks thus become methods of character interpretation; a set of dramatic tools establishing the player's newly created self-identity.^[49]

The dialogue of the NPCs was given many possible outcomes, dependent on the player character's experience of the world. Designer Steve Dalin uses a hypothetical farmer Bob as an example. "if you talk to farmer Bob early in the game, you may have 5 things that you mutually know about, but if you come back later in the game, the number of things might expand as your knowledge has grown and you now have more things in common to discuss – hence more dialogue options with farmer Bob" This results in a game "text" that can be arranged not only in a variety of orders, but also in response to the actions of the player. The implementation of these goals was not without its share of suffering. "...Letting the player kill anyone he likes meant we had to handle MANY different possible alive/dead states for characters encountered in quests," notes developer Ken Rolston. "For example, if you have to deliver a cup of spit of Fred, and Fred is dead, we had to write extra dialog to handle that. Given nearly 3000 characters, and given that some quests involved many individuals, that turned out to be a soul-crushing labor."^[50]

According to Gamasutra's Matt Barton, some have argued that these changes put Morrowind closer in spirit to the original D&D tabletop game, where players take a more creative role in their play, and where players are left to decide for themselves the "right" action.^[51] This is a view paralleled by Rolston, who has stated that "The goal of every TES game is to create something that resembles a pen and paper RPG on the computer."^[45] Critic Robert L. Turner uses Morrowind as an early example of what he calls a "reader-driven text", such as that of the hypothesized "Primer" of Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age. While not a "text" in a traditional sense, he states, it possesses some of the basic components of a speculative "ideal open text":^[52] "it is simultaneously open and narrative driven; that is, there is a goal towards which the player must work, and a progression of the story and difficulty of the game. Yet, at the same time, the means to accomplish the goal, and to a degree, the goal itself are mutable and the player can effectively decide how to reach the proposed goals according to his/her own preferences, rather than following a tightly scripted role." A key element of this design, states Turner, is that it has no ideal players; it accepts all. The result is nothing short of "groundbreaking flexibility". "The world can be visited in a wide variety of orders...and the interactions with the diverse personalities can also play out in a wide variety of ways." Nonetheless, the central plot of Morrowind is still limited to the thematic and structural archetype of "the quest of the hero across a land filled with many dangers to defeat evil forces and conquer a desirable object." The only differences in this instance are but that "the hero can lose, and that the adventure never ends."^[52] Ultimately, the game "cannot recreate itself; it can only adjust to the circumstances created by the player."

The sheer number of quest possibilities, combined with what developer Ken Rolston identified as a lack of "narrative urgency", left many critics dissatisfied with Morrowind's main plot. Rolston, in an interview conducted after the release of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, felt some regret for that lack. Oblivion, he noted, had given drama and force to the plot without sacrificing player freedom. "I only wish," he stated, "we'd presented Morrowind's main narrative with the same obtrusive urgency."^[53] Turner quotes from one of Rolston's communications to him, explaining the popular disapproval of nonlinear narrative methods. In it, Rolston states that "most people are more comfortable with more linear entertainments – perhaps because they are familiar like books and movies, perhaps because humans are most comfortable with experiences with simple, linear structures." Noting the struggle involved in the creation and use of the game, Turner concludes that Morrowind is of a marginal breed. "These types of texts, if they are ever fully realized, will probably exist in roughly the same proportion to mainstream texts as previously revolutionary works have existed....There certainly is space for this type of reader driven narrative, but I suspect we are a long way from it becoming the norm."^[50]

[edit] The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

See also: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

[edit] Transportation

The fast-travel system returned in Oblivion, to modest praise.^[54][55] In Oblivion, if a player visits a location, it appears as an icon on their map. The icon may then be clicked to visit that location, with time elapsing in the interim.^[56] In an interview with RPGamer, producer Gavin Carter stated that the return of the system came in response to the Elder Scrolls fan community's suggestions, as something that "the fan community has requested again and again."^[57] Oblivion also introduced ridable horses while removing Morrowind's transportation options, such as Mages' Guild teleporters, silt striders and teleporting spells. The game also removed all levitation spells and items, as the cities in Oblivion are separate cells from the rest of the world and thus must be entered and exited through the town gate to avoid glitches.^[58] Unlike those of Morrowind, Oblivion's non-player characters may enter and exit areas at will, and will do so quite often, following the Radiant AI's commands.^[59]

[edit] Character creation

Oblivion generally follows Morrowind's character creation schema, and was equally praised for its design. Rather than being left completely free to roam from the moment the character is created, Oblivion gives the player some time to choose their own play style, and recommends certain character classes in accordance with that choice. The recommendations system was called "clever" by GameSpot.^[60] The character creation system also allowed greater depth of visual specification than Morrowind, offering the ability to customize skin tone, facial structure, hair styles, eye color, and various other features individually,^[61] rather than choosing a set combination of textures and meshes, as was the case in Morrowind. As such, the system was lauded for providing a depth of specification unattainable by other contemporary games.^[61][62]

[edit] Skill system

Oblivion's skill system is essentially the same as Morrowind's, with skills increasing by use. The only differences are the removal of some skills from Morrowind (Spear, Enchant, Unarmored, Medium Armor) and the consolidation of others(Axe, Blunt> Blunt;Short Blade, Long Blade> Blade)

[edit] Interface

Replacing Morrowind's resizeable windows, Oblivion developed a system of nested menus of fixed proportion. The interface was marked out as seemingly influenced to an excess by the needs of the Xbox 360, affording little opportunity for the free exercise of the mouse and keyboard.^[63][64][65] In contrast to Morrowind's PC-sized font, Oblivion was said to have "enormous 36-point text font", a feature most unappealing to PC reviewers.^[63] Oblivion contains a hotkey system, though one that was seen by some reviewers as insufficiently large, and limited in scope. IGN complained about the lack of a simple hotkey-switching system, wherein a player could have a "hotkey set for magic, one for combat, one for fighting undead, one for marksman, etc.". Owing to the proliferation of items, spells, weapons, and armor, which were numbered in the hundreds, Oblivion's limit of 8 hotkey assignments was seen as constraining. The lack of the system meant, to IGN, that the player would have to continuously switch hotkey assignments to match the current circumstances, making the game "more of a hassle than it should be."^[66] GameSpy's PC review complained that certain interface menus were not assignable to certain keys. Singling out a particular issue, GameSpy found the journal and inventory not assignable to "J" or "I".^[63] Amongst GameSpot's few complaints was one regarding a slight lack of streamlining in the inventory.^[64]

There was some minor disagreement between reviewers regarding the ease on the PC controls as compared to the controls on the Xbox. GameSpot, in its PC review, felt them to be equally suited to the Xbox and the PC,^[64] while GamePro felt the PC controls somewhat better as regards response, menu selection, and ranged combat.^[62] Elsewhere, GameSpot was of a different mind. In a feature comparing Oblivion on the Xbox 360 and PC, GameSpot concluded that the game felt more natural on the Xbox 360. Menus were easier to flip through using the shoulder buttons rather than mousing over them, and the rumble pack made controlling the Xbox more tactile. The ability of remapping controls on the PC was also noted by GameSpot as a relevant feature, but, in the last analysis, it was deemed to fall on the player's relative tolerance of PC and Xbox controls.^[65]

[edit] Combat

One major focus during Oblivion's development was correcting Morrowind's imbalance between stealth, combat and magic skill sets.^[67][68] The skills system is similar to Morrowind's, though the number of skills is decreased, with the medium armor and unarmored skill removed altogether, and the short blade and long blade skills condensed into a single blade skill.^[69] The game also introduced "mastery levels," which give skill-specific bonuses when the player reaches a certain level in that skill. The combat system was also revamped, with the addition of "power attacks", generally given by mastery levels, and the removal of the separate styles of melee attacks present in Morrowind. Ranged attacks were also changed, so that the determination of a hit is based solely on whether the arrow struck the target in-game, rather than the character's skill level. Spears, throwing weapons, and crossbows were removed as well, while staffs no longer counted as weapons, but are only used for casting spells.^[70] The choice came from a desire to focus all development efforts in ranged weapons on bows specifically, to "get the feel of those as close to perfect as possible", as perfect as the Havok physics engine allowed the team to do. Morrowind's passive Block skill became an active feature in Oblivion, activated by a button press. When, in the new system, an enemy is successfully blocked, they now recoil, offering an opening for attack. Many players of Morrowind were appalled at Oblivion's changes, heated discussions still happen almost every day in the Morrowind forums.^[71]

[edit] References

v • d • e The Elder Scrolls series Main series Arena · Daggerfall · Morrowind (Tribunal · Bloodmoon) · Oblivion (Knights of the Nine · Shivering Isles) Spin-offs Battlespire · Redguard · Travels Universe Argonian · Elsweyr · Organizations · Races · Tamriel Related articles Gameplay · Development history · Development of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion · ESRB re-rating of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion