The Elder Scrolls Online: High Isle preview
The Elder Scrolls Online has just celebrated its eighth birthday — the Anniversary Jubilee event is still in full swing until April 19th — and it’s been a wild ride over the years, with the inclusion of five chapter expansions, 19 DLC packs, and a host of updates. It features over 200,000 lines of voice-over in each language, hundreds of thousands of NPCs, and thousands of quests. “ESO is thriving and we’re not slowing down. We announced earlier this year that we crossed the 20 million player mark,” said Lambert. “We are charging ahead towards 21 [million players] already, and things couldn’t be better. We are still committed to quarterly updates and a huge chapter every year.”
Considering the team has been working from home for the last two years due to the pandemic, the constant flow of content and a mostly uninterrupted schedule is a pretty impressive feat. Both the Greymoor and Blackwood chapters were developed and released while the team adjusted to the new way of working. “The challenges of working from home have not been insignificant,” says Lambert. “It has been a huge effort from the team to learn how to be collaborative, [and] learn how to work together again while we’re all [working] from home. I’m really proud of what the team has done over the last few years.” Both chapters launched with a ton of new content, including features like the Antiquity and Companion systems, and were accompanied by three DLC drops each. The upcoming sixth chapter, High Isle, has been developed from the team’s home-working environments like the previous two chapters, and is on track to deliver the same amount of content.
“This is a never-before-seen location in The Elder Scrolls. The island chain was only ever on a map in Redguard, there are no lore books about it, and there’s really no lore about it at all, so this was an exciting thing for the team,” Lambert says. “They were able to work really closely with Bethesda Game Studios on this to come up with what we wanted and how it ties into the overall lore, and I’m excited about what we came up with.”
In recent years, we’ve had Daedric Princes scheme and plot Tamriel’s destruction, Vampire Lords threaten our annihilation with armies of werewolves and witches, dragons lay waste to vast regions of land, and the Sload rise from their watery homes to once again become a royal pain in the backside. It’s been one potential apocalyptic event after another, and due to that, it’s easy to forget that Tamriel is still in the midst of the bloody Three Banners War. This year, Rich and the team have focused their attention on the most destructive and conniving beings Tamriel has ever faced… mortals.
“Don’t take the island chain size at face value according to the map. Like the real world, not all maps of the world are correct,” Lambert explains. “This year’s chapter is every bit as large as the previous one in terms of explorable space.” High Isle is part of the Systres archipelago, which was originally used as a staging point for the All Flags Navy during the war with the Sload. Over time, it has morphed into an island resort for the wealthiest Bretons and features Arthurian tournament grounds and magnificent castles, showcasing the very best of Breton architecture. For the nobility of High Isle, life is built around politics and grandeur — everything its neighbouring island of Amenos isn’t.
Amenos is an Escape from New York-style prison on a lush jungle island; a dumping ground for anyone that doesn’t belong, or isn’t welcome, in High Isle — political prisoners, criminals, dissidents, and the like. The prison itself is built into a giant caldera, and anyone that is thrown in there is on their own. Lambert didn’t go into specifics about what we’ll be doing on the island, but he did say there is a small contingent on the island’s outskirts with a safe area that features quests and objectives to explore. Travel between the islands requires the use of boats, and any area that has wealthy people riding boats, by the law of video games, must have pirates. If you’ve played the new Shipwright’s Regret dungeon that was introduced with the Ascending Tide DLC you’ve already met the scallywags causing chaos on the coasts of High Isle.
The nobles of High Isle have had a gutful of the Dread Sail pirates causing havoc and hire you to raid their home base in a brand-new 12-player Trial. According to Lambert, we can expect the new Trial to be roughly the same size as Rockgrove, which was added with the Blackwood chapter. It features three unique bosses, all with their own Hard Mode difficulties, and ZeniMax has ensured that the Trial is filled with new visuals and mechanics that will apply pressure to players. “The team actually took a lot of lessons learned and did some wild and crazy things,” Lambert says. “I think players are going to very much enjoy what’s in store for them.”
High Isle is doing away with catastrophic events and focusing more on political intrigue, drawing our attention to the Three Banners War and helping us dive into Breton culture. A humanitarian organisation known as the Society of the Steadfast are attempting to negotiate peace talks to end the Three Banners War. Lambert describes them as relatable to the Red Cross, so they’re focused on providing aid to those who’ve been affected by the war. Of course, negotiating peace talks wouldn’t be too intriguing on its own, and war has a way of favouring some people or organisations.
This particular organisation is known as the Ascendant Order. They’re a mysterious lot, led by the even more mysterious Ascendant Lord and Ascendant Magus. Nobody knows who they are due to them never appearing out of their full garb and masks — why would you when your armour is that cool, right? The Order’s ultimate goal is to abolish the three alliances altogether, freeing Tamriel from their rule. It’ll be up to us to find out who they are and put a stop to their schemes.
With each new chapter, the team always looks to add a brand-new feature to The Elder Scrolls Online, and High Isle is no different. This year, we’re getting the Tales of Tribute card game, a PvE and PvP competitive turn-based two-sided resource deck-building game, with lore and storytelling at its very heart. The idea behind Tales of Tribute is that you build your deck when actually playing instead of creating a deck outside of gameplay and using that against your opponent. It’s what the team envisions the denizens of Tamriel playing when they’re sat in taverns or taking long boat trips to far-off shores.
The core of Tales of Tribute is of course your card decks, or Patron Decks, as they’re called here. As the name suggests, each of the decks are based on various Elder Scrolls patrons, such as Hunding, Pelin, and the Duke of Crows. Each of the decks contain a suite of 20 cards thematically tied together with a focus on differing gameplay mechanics. Some decks revolve around drawing cards quickly, while others work around removal of your opponent’s cards or generating resources. There will be eight decks available when High Isle releases; four will automatically unlock once you’ve completed the tutorial, and the other four can be earned by other means.
It sounds like Tales of Tribute will find its way into many other aspects of the Elder Scrolls Online, with unlocking achievements, ranking up, and other activities offering you a chance to earn upgraded cards for your decks. Various aspects of gameplay can reward you with riddles that, once solved, can take you to parts of Tamriel to find upgrades — this sounds like it could be similar to the Antiquity system but on a much larger scale, and the cards you discover will be bound to you just like Antiquities. Now, while upgrading your cards can certainly aid in the strength of your Patron Decks, it doesn’t mean you’ll have an advantage over your opponent. The Elder Scrolls Online has always ensured that it’s accessible to players of all levels, and Tales of Tribute is no different. Just because your opponent has spent hours unlocking all of the cards, it doesn’t mean they’ll wipe the floor with you.
When starting a game of Tales of Tribute, both players pick two of their Patron Decks each, which get shuffled into one pile and placed in the middle of the board, called the Tavern. Both players are given a hand of ten starter cards and play begins. The aim of the game is to gain victory by either of two ways: earn the favour of all four patrons by paying their price, or accrue 40 Prestige Points, which are earned at the end of each turn when your remaining power is converted. Essentially, you earn more Prestige the more resources you control (gold, Prestige, and power). Of course, defending your resources or not blasting through them is the key to winning Tales of Tribute, but it sounds like you’ll have your work cut out for you.
Tales of Tribute features three card types — Action, Agent, and Contract — that all offer various functions such as destroying enemy cards, defending your own, generating resources, and so forth. The main card type that will be played are Action cards, which have multiple purposes like drawing and discarding cards, stealing resources from your opponents, helping you generate additional power, and the like. Once you play an Action card, it’s placed into your discard pile. Alongside these are special action cards called Agents, and unlike the base Action cards, Agents are placed on the board with various effects that hinder your opponent and force them to deal with their effects. Finally, the Contract cards are powerful one-shot cards that are designed to be used immediately before being removed from the game.
As I said before, Tales of Tribute features PvE and PvP game modes. It has a full storyline to experience with NPCs around Tamriel, and the PvP aspect has progression and seasonal leaderboards that pay out rewards much like the Arena and Cyrodiil boards. Much like other aspects of The Elder Scrolls Online, there will be plenty of rewards available to players that enjoy playing, such as gold, crafting materials, furniture, emotes, cosmetics, Transmutation Crystals, and the like.
We didn’t get a chance to learn about the two new companions, Ember and Isobel, during the event, but the recent reveal stream from ZeniMax has just covered them in more detail. Lambert did tell us that quality-of-life improvements in the way of rewritten leaderboards, which should offer a more reliable experience and show all of the data once High Isle has been released. Additionally, the Armoury will finally save your Mundus Stone choice with your loadouts, so you won’t have to do a Mundus run each time you swap to a different build — that was just a pain in the backside.
“This is a really, really big chapter for us, a big moment for us. It is High Isle and Amenos, 30-plus hours of quest content. There’s tons of stuff to explore here. A very different storyline. We have Tribute coming, [and] we have something for our veteran players,” says Lambert. “This is our moment and we’re really excited about this. The team has put a ton of time into this, and I think it is our best chapter yet.”
All said, The Elder Scrolls Online: High Isle is looking incredible, and I can’t wait to dive into the content with my Warden — casually dressed in the Breton Hero costume from the trailers because it’s ace. I’m even more interested in Tales of Tribute now that I’ve got an understanding of its basic formula, and I’m sure it’ll offer a great way to spend a few hours of downtime between Veteran dungeon runs. I’ll be ready for High Isle’s launch on June 21st! Who’s with me?
