Tamriel Has Other People in It Now

Skyrim was one of the loneliest games I’ve ever loved. Not lonely in a bad way—more like the loneliness of an early morning walk when no one else is out yet, when the whole world seems to belong only to you. You killed the bandits. You built the house. You sent the horse tumbling down the mountain because you wanted to see what would happen. No one saw. No one judged. Just you and Bethesda’s physics engine.

The Elder Scrolls Online is a different proposition. Other people in Tamriel, wandering through your mountains, your dungeons, your carefully maintained horse-launching spots. Whether that’s a feature or a problem depends entirely on who you ask. The character creator footage that surfaced suggests the tools are substantial—you can spend a satisfying hour sculpting a face before you’ve touched the actual game, which has always been part of the Elder Scrolls ritual.

The early forum complaints have already started, centered on the apparently unacceptable fact that female character breast size can’t be adjusted. Someone logged this as their primary concern during a preview of a massive online RPG. I have thoughts about that person. I’ll keep them to myself. Some arguments aren’t worth having on the internet, and this is approximately all of them.