Elder Scrolls Online's Skill System Lets You Be Everything
Such skills, so progression, wow
When I was little, I wanted to grow up to be a fireman and an astronaut and a cowboy and a monster truck and Batman and a shoe and a barn and a machine that could produce infinite popsicles and the head of a moderately successful middle management firm. Eventually, however, I realized that I'd have to settle on just one thing, so I decided that I hated money and became a games journo. The Elder Scrolls Online, however, ties no such noose of practicality around the neck of your dreams. Given time and exploration, you can be everything. Video detailing how it all works below.
I'm not sold on other aspects of TESO (though I must say that it's at least finally getting the visual style down), but the skill system is certainly alluring. Pick up a weapon? There's an entire skill set you can master as you please. Join a guild or complete some other world activity - like, for instance, getting bitten by a vampire? Skill set. And they can all be tied to one character.
Ultimates also look suitably over-the-top, with the dragon-wing ultra-stomp thing doing an especially nice job of making me want to crank Danger Zone and rain scaly death from on high. Also, there's one called Rushed Ceremony, but I misheard it as RUSH Ceremony and was desperately sad to find that it wasn't this:
Oh well. I'll slay impossible creatures with winding sonic labyrinths of prog rock someday, somehow. Guess it's time to make another mod.
The Elder Scrolls Online will be out next year. Based on what I've played and what I'm seeing now, it mostly just makes me want to go play Skyrim again. I can feel the adventure lust stirring in the most wayward portions of my loins, but TESO - at least, in my experience - is too confined and empty to actually sate me. We'll see, though. Maybe time has given it room to grow into its series' massive legacy. Hopefully, even, but I'm not getting my hopes up.