Elder Scrolls Online
Take a step back and consider the greatest, most established brands in the RPG genre and you’ll soon compile a list the includes the likes of Final Fantasy, Diablo, Persona et al., and it’s a list the often splits into two camps: the western RPG and the JRPG. Whereas the latter fills our screens with loveable, eclectic characters with ludicrous hair, the former is, for the most part, all about the setting.
Game series like Fallout and, crucially, The Elder Scrolls have provided us with some of the richest, most engrossing environments to get lost in over the years, so when Bethesda confirmed that the latter RPG would make its transition from single-player to multiplayer, the industry at large was understandably excited. But for The Elder Scrolls Online, that path to the MMO space proved to be riddled with pitfalls.
Strip away all of the padding of an MMO and, as a genre, games of this nature live or die depending on their ability to engage the player with content that is sustainable over an extended period of time. But for ESO, lumbered with a poor story that was constantly at ends with the multiplayer component, not to mention the underwhelming amount of content, Bethesda missed the mark in bringing one of the most revered RPG franchises in the industry to the multiplayer space.
The Elder Scrolls Online was, for all intents and purposes, a monumental flash in the pan.
–Michael Briers