ZeniMax’s Matt Firor was more than eager to discuss the inclusion of dragons to The Elder Scrolls Online Elsweyr after five years of fan anticipation.
We asked Matt how the Dragons in Elsweyr compare to those in Skyrim and why they’re laying waste to the Khajiit and their home.
“[The dragon attack in Elsweyr is] not like a Skyrim size, huge invasion, but it’s much more than [the three dragons shown in the Elsweyr trailer],” he said.
“Basically [the dragons have] been locked in the Halls of Colossus for reasons unknown for a long, long, long time and they’re just hell bent on revenge. And they get caught up in the imperial invasion of Elsweyr which is kind of the big story that’s going on behind the scenes which is where the imperials have invaded Elsweyr with a necromancy army, and they use the dragon as the chaos element to kind of shake thing up a bit. And of course it gets out of hand and then everybody’s fighting everyone.”
How the dragons appear in ESO is also a change to a long-standing formula.
“In the base game we have Dollmans which are the dark anchors that come out of the sky, in Summerset we had Abyssal Geysers. Dragons are kind of the “world event” of Elsweyr but we did them a little differently than the others. [In Elsweyr] it’s essentially random where dragons spawn, and you’ll actually see them on the map. When you open the map if there’s a dragon flying around you’ll actually see them and basically players can go in and try and take them down.”
Feeling rather ambitious, and perhaps a little overconfident in our abilities in ESO, we couldn’t help but ask if it was worth trying to go up against a dragon alone.
“I’m sure someone, somewhere will do it, and it will work with some combination of build, but generally speaking they’re very very tough,” Firor said. “What’s important to know is that in Elsweyr, you’re not Dovahkiin. You’re not Dragonborn. So you’re not using dragon shouts and you’re not taking dragons down by yourself. They’re big tough, badass creatures.”
The Elder Scrolls Online: Elsweyr heads to Windows PC on 20 May and on Xbox One and PS4 from 4 June 2019.
Jay Ball travelled to the UK as a guest of Bethesda to preview The Elder Scrolls Online. Flights and accommodation were paid for by Bethesda.
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