You Talking To Me? Questing In The Elder Scrolls Online

With the tutorial out of the way things began to look up for my soul-shriven Kajiit Darknight but before he was finally free to go his own way there was one more twist to come. When it arrived it did begin to occur to me that the developers might be playing some kind of post-modernist prank; either that or someone had a bet going that they could fit every single MMO cliche into a single incomprehensible and convoluted origin story.

Just about the only box left unchecked by the tutorial itself was the old "pulled unconscious/half-drowned from the sea by a fisherman/sea captain" routine, so naturally that turned out to be exactly what happened when The Prophet and I catapulted ourselves back into Tyria Telon Tamriel. At least, that's what happened to me. The Prophet turned up somewhere else altogether - AkAnon or Mekalia from the description he gave. Could have been The Black Citadel. Somewhere with a lot of clanking machinery and a steampunk vibe anyway.

His astral projection left me with the final thought that if I had nothing better to do I might wander down to the docks and offer my thanks to the ship's captain who'd pulled me out of the drink. I had my own ideas, which mostly consisted of wandering around Daggerfall like a gawping tourist, taking screenshots.

Okay, so that's not actually Daggerfall. The principle holds.

As MMO cities go Daggerfall is quite convincing. There's a bit of an issue of scale, with everything built on heroic proportions, but that, like the townsfolk who seem to have nothing better to do than stand around day and night waiting to start up conversations with strangers, comes with the territory. At least they move about in a purposeful fashion giving the place a pleasantly lived-in feel.

And they really do start conversations. That was the thing that struck me most after a couple of hours play. In TESO you don't find quests - quests find you. I found it quite immersive; almost naturalistic, if only on the Littlest Hobo or A-Team scale of naturalism.

There's clearly some kind of proximity trigger that causes NPCs to react to your character's presence. Guards move you on if you get too close; gardeners comment on the weather and so on. That's a nice touch but where the mechanism really shines is when you pass within range of a potential questgiver.

It was soon after this that I was certified. Not before time some may well think.

Rather than someone running up to you, yelling and waving their arms and demanding you Do Something! as frequently happens around dynamic events in GW2, in TESO you tend to overhear things that might be to your advantage. Or not.

I'd already decided I wasn't going to run straight down to the docks to thank my rescuer. Instead I'd been ambling around getting my bearings. I found a noticeboard that informed me about crafting writs, again in quite an immersive and unobtrusive fashion, and I was pondering on that when I heard someone behind me saying something about the docks.

Before I'd really had time to think about it I'd turned and replied and next thing I knew I had a quest to go speak to the captain who'd saved me from the waves. It all flowed so well I abandoned my crafting aspirations for the while and went down to the harbor to pay my respects.

I never did find a good angle.

That seemed to set a pattern. I played for around three hours last night and most of what I did arose directly and serendipitously out of seemingly chance encounters. At one point a dog ran near me and barked; looking down I noticed I could interact with her so I did. She led me, Lassie-like, to her fallen master and his dropped shopping list and thence began a nefarious plot concerning dark magic, or possibly just very poor cooking skills, that I'm still unraveling.

These beetles only dropped iron armor. Its ludicrous but at least its consistently ludicrous.

While I was exploring along the coast and through the dunes, killing scorpions for fishing bait and beetles for armor upgrades and having a thoroughly fine time, I spotted a statue. Always on the alert for a photo opportunity I headed over and hopped up on the plinth. I was swiveling around trying to get an angle that would include me, the statue and a large lizard, when I heard someone talking to himself.

I hadn't noticed anyone around but the voice seemed to come from below me. I stood up and looked over the small ridge on which the statue stood to find an orc. He turned out to be having a little problem with maternal expectations that I was able to help him resolve. The initial encounter and subsequent quest sequence felt unusually solid, authentic even, which I put down largely to the naturalistic way in which the orc and my character met.


In this respect my early impressions are that TESO has managed a small but significant improvement in the quest acquisition process. Whether the approach will continue beyond the starting areas and cities remains to be seen. It's certainly often the case in MMOs that polish and innovation of this kind tend to fade away as the levels wear on. I hope not. I like it.

The quest text itself is nothing like as innovative. It tends towards the plain and workmanlike, which is no bad thing. The examples I've seen so far don't have the wealth of detail of EQ2 or the delightful archness of FFXIV but neither do they have the odd, slightly off-register tone of WoW.

The voice acting, too, seems understated and restrained. Every quest is voiced in full (indeed all NPCs with or without quests seem to have a spoken line or two in them). The main problem I've encountered questing so far comes with the actors' speed of delivery.

Give a cat a fish...

With the one striking exception of Nicolette, who gabbles out her lines almost too fast for the sense, every single NPC speaks in somnolent tones, as though giving dictation. By the time I'm at the end of the text they are rarely halfway through their oration. Fortunately they don't insist on completing each speech before allowing me to move the dialog on to the next stage.

TESO does follow the longstanding convention of putting icons over the heads of questgivers but these are, once again, rather understated. I'm not quite sure whether they even appear over characters to whom your character hasn't yet spoken or, possibly, who your character hasn't yet heard. Either way, there are no forests of glowing neon question marks and exclamation points, only a sprinkling of dull grey lozenges here and there.

I don't have much to say about the quest journal because as yet I've rarely had cause to refer to it. The quests seem to toddle along quite nicely with no more than the odd nudge from the handy Add-On mini map. There's a huge compass bar that hangs across the high center of the screen that I've only latterly realized acts as a directional marker for all kinds of things, quests included, but I haven't yet fathomed its complexities so I tend to ignore it.

I'm pretty sure this isn't just here to add local color...

All things considered, then, I'm rather enamored of the questing in TESO thus far. It's ever-present yet unobtrusive, interesting, entertaining and easy to follow without being insulting to my or my character's intelligence. I do get a slightly disconcerting feeling that there's a lot going on around me that I'm not being allowed to know about because I haven't hit the correct quest triggers yet but I can live with that.

This morning I ordered a copy of TESO for Mrs Bhagpuss. Our Sundays-only GW2 guildmate, on hearing that the subscription is dropping in March, expressed an interest in joining us, so it looks as though this one might stick, at least for a little while.

Next up: what's with this Vanguard vibe?