Elder Scrolls Online is recognizable thanks to the lore, says Director

The director of Elder Scrolls Online, Matt Firor, has said the game will be recognizable to fans thanks to the deep and familiar series lore - even though the game is set 1000 years prior to the other games.

Asked by Edge what he felt made the game clearly an Elder Scrolls title, his response was simple: "Lore."

"Even now, I come across lore that I didn’t know existed. It’s just so deep. People play games for different reasons, but the people who respond to Elder Scrolls the most like to get immersed in a world so that they feel they’re living there. They like to have freedom of choice to do what they want to do, and that’s the part that resonates with us the most."

"This is what makes the IP so great for an MMOG already: people already know it’s the kind of game where they can head out and explore and be rewarded for it. That’s the one thing that player will learn immediately that’s different about us: if you see something in the distance, you can go and investigate and be rewarded for it."

Despite the depth of the lore to follow, Firor says he and his team were given a great degree of freedom by IP holders Zenimax. "The IP’s fantastic, fantasy MMOGs are always a little more successful than others and I think there’s a reason for that, and they knew they wanted to do that. Other than that, it was a blank slate. I proposed the three alliances, the fight over the imperial city, and the setting 1000 years in the past. That got traction, and we went from there."

In the interview Firor also goes in depth on his philosophy of the 'generations' of MMO development - he considers this the third generation - and avoiding the game being as buggy as single player Elder Scrolls titles have typically been. Check out the full thing over at Edge.