General:George Ziets' Posts

George Ziets' Posts
Medium/Format	Online Forum
Interviewee(s)	George Ziets

These are a few notable comments from George Ziets on The Elder Scrolls setting.

2013

Given the record of recent MMOs like SWTOR, do you think Elder Scrolls Online will succeed? I realize you may have a bias here, but care to tell us why you think TESO will be different from other underwhelming entries to the genre?? (06-01-2013)

I honestly don’t know. When I working on ESO, I considered their advantages to be: 1) 3-faction PvP, which worked very well in Dark Age of Camelot and kept a lot of people playing that game for a long time (and in fact, it’s apparently still running); 2) the popularity of the lore and the world, and the fact that TES fans will get to see parts of that world that have been mentioned a lot but never seen in a game (unless you count Arena); and 3) an emphasis on narrative and storytelling, which has been notably absent in most big MMOs. That last point may be less important than I had hoped, given the fate of SWTOR. But then, SWTOR relied heavily on instances, and I don’t think ESO is going to do that, so their approach to storytelling may be more appealing to the MMO crowd.

Also, it sounds like they’ve de-emphasized classes since I left, which could be interesting. Or it could be a disaster – it all depends upon the implementation. I do think it’s truer to the TES setting, though, which (to me) is a plus.

Bottom line – WoW is showing its age, and they have an opportunity if they built a really strong, addictive, well-balanced game. On the other hand, subscription-based MMOs are a much harder sell now than they were a few years ago so… it'll be an uphill battle to achieve the spectacular success they need. In my opinion - the more they feel like an Elder Scrolls game and utilize the unique elements of that setting, the better off they'll be. I'm encouraged by recent interviews, but we will see...

Now that Zenimax is releasing more details of TESO and it's set up, do you recognize any of your work or ideas in the final product? (22-01-2013)

Yes! I recognized a few characters and high-level ideas (e.g., Abnur Tharn and his daughter the Empress-Regent, Jorunn the Skald-king, and the idea of an elven queen who'd spent her early years as an adventurer). A lot of the details have changed, but that's to be expected in four years of development, and I really like what Lawrence Schick and his narrative team have done with the motivations for the three alliances and their leaders. One of the things that's always important to me is to keep character motivations believably human. They've clearly done that, and Schick's video got me pretty excited about the game.

I was especially happy that the Tharns are still present, not only because I liked those characters, but also because of the connection to TES I. (Admission: I wooped out loud when I saw those guys appear in the video.)

Mannimarco is a pretty great character from TES lore too. As I recall, the person who first proposed his inclusion in the story was producer (and top-notch creative guy) Andrew Boyd.

During your time away from Obsidian, you spent some time writing for The Elder Scrolls Online. How was that experience? What are the strengths of the Elder Scrolls settings? Also, similar to the previous question regarding Fallout: if you held the reins on a new Elder Scrolls adventure, where would you like to take it? (07-05-2013)

In 2008, I was Lead Quest Designer for Elder Scrolls Online. We were in preproduction during that whole period, so I didn’t actually design any quests or write any characters. My time was spent laying the foundation for the game – developing the main storyline and provincial storylines for each race, designing major characters and faction leaders, writing backstories for the alliances, determining the state of the TES world during the earlier time period, and working with the artists to create visual style guides for the races, characters, armor, architecture, etc. I don’t know how much of that stuff is still in the game - the main story has changed a lot - but I did notice that they’re using some of the characters I developed (the Tharns, Skald King Jorunn, the adventurer-queen of Summurset, and possibly others).

Overall, I enjoyed my time at Zenimax. The team was much smaller then, and the designers were a tight-knit group – we played board games together every Friday and got to know each other well. Todd Howard and his team at Bethesda had to approve our story and lore, but they were easy to work with – it was a much smoother experience than many I’ve had. Ultimately I decided to return to traditional RPGs, but only because I enjoy that genre more.

Elder Scrolls’ greatest strength, in my opinion, is its lore. If you dig into the lorebooks, you’ll find a world that’s subtle and deep, full of gray morality, ambiguity, and sophisticated myths. In TES lore, truth is subjective. Nobody knows what *really* happened in the past, but every fictional author has their own opinion or interpretation, which feels a lot more “true” to me than the authoritative encyclopedias that we see in other games. Plus the disagreements and differing interpretations set up conflicts between factions in the game, which is best illustrated in Morrowind.

Recent installments of TES haven’t fulfilled the promise of the lore, in my opinion. I understand why they’ve moved away from the subtlety of Morrowind – to appeal to the mass market – but I think the audience can handle more subtlety than many developers believe.

My approach to a TES game probably won’t surprise anyone. I’d take the player to someplace they’ve never seen before – preferably to one of the regions that doesn’t resemble Western Europe. Someplace that sets up the player as a stranger in a strange land. Maybe Elsweyr, Valenwood, or Black Marsh… or even across the sea to Akavir, which supposedly has monkey people, vampiric serpents, and may hold the secrets of the Blades’ origins. I think a story of exploration and first contact (e.g., using the East Empire Company) could be fun, and it’s something I rarely see in RPGs.

Ideally, I’d also try to marry the open-ended gameplay with an open-ended narrative. It always seems strange to me that TES places so much emphasis on freedom and player choice in exploring the world and solving quests, while the main storylines are effectively linear, with little or no player autonomy. Fallout: New Vegas showed that narrative choice can coexist with an open world. I might push it farther, giving players high-level narrative objectives that they can pursue in a variety of ways and make the open-ended story one of the game’s selling points.​

2014

The Elder Scrolls Online has now launched, and there was also a lot of beta testing earlier this year. Have you had a chance to play it? If so, what are your thoughts on how they have handled the lore and quest design – and anything else you were involved with at your time at Zenimax? (22-05-2014)

Sadly, I haven’t had a chance to play ESO yet, though I did skim through some of the new entries on UESP, my old go-to source for Elder Scrolls lore. (I spent countless hours on that site while I was employed at Zenimax.) I was pleasantly surprised to find that the team retained a lot of the lore I wrote way back in 2008. It’s mostly confined to backstory events– e.g., the Longhouse Emperors, the exploits of Varen and the Tharns – though also some of the main story characters, and it was fun to see a bit of my work on UESP. Even if the Elder Scrolls franchise has had its ups and downs, it’s exciting to have played a part in shaping that world.​