Quality over quantity

Unlike most MMOs, ESO isn’t concerned with shoving a sheer quantity of quests into each zone. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a decent number to be found in each region, but this isn’t the sort of game where you hoover up, say, six missions at a time and knock them out in an enemy camp.

Rather, the focus is clearly on creating a quality experience with fewer quests. Many of these side quests are just as interesting (if not more so!) than the zone-wide saga. I know they’re my favorite. A typical quest arc plays out in under an hour (usually around the 30 minute range) and involves a lot of steps, encounters, and story beats.
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The focus

To go along with that first item, I appreciate that this MMO really wants me to focus on a single quest at a time. It truly helps to stay on track with a single tale and seeing it through from beginning to end. I’m reminded of the same approach that The Secret World had (which also featured fewer missions in favor of more detailed ones).

The voice acting and characters

I don’t know about you, but having every character completely voice acted adds a great amount of immersion to my play experience. It helps to flesh out an NPC’s character to hear their accent and emotions come clearly through the audio. A really good voice actor can make me want to get to know that NPC a lot more and be more primed to care about what happens to them over the course of the quest.

It’s also great to stick with these characters during the full length of the quest, as they defy the normal MMO trope of being someone you only see to accept and turn in a task.

The bonus dialogue

And speaking of voice acting — no pun intended — it’s definitely cool that Elder Scrolls Online adds a ton of extra dialogue for you to enjoy. You’ll notice that once you hit a certain dialogue prompt with an NPC, the quest will progress and you can close down the window and get moving. However, you’re almost always offered plenty of follow-up questions to help flesh out the setting, other characters, and the NPC’s backstory. I’ve been exploring all of those extra dialogue bits for a while, and I can say that they’re worthy of your time.

The unfolding tale

In most MMOs, quests are things to do where the story happens on the front and back end. That’s not the way it happens in this game. ESO likes to set up a story and then have you go through it, beat by beat, the way you would in an adventure game. Things happen during the quest, and getting to see it unfold as you move through it is one of the singular joys of this game.

The scripting

If you’re used to MMOs where quest givers seem to have their feet nailed to the ground, you’re going to love how much ESO uses scripting to tell stories. Characters come and go during the arc, sometimes even fighting alongside of you for a time. There are all sorts of interesting triggers that can happen during the adventure, from enemies appearing to taunt you from unreachable vistas to allies scaling walls to unlock a gate for you. It’s one of my absolute favorite thing about quests in this game.

The roleplaying

I’m not going to elevate Elder Scrolls Online to, say, SWTOR’s level of quest roleplay, but it’s pretty substantial. There are often points when you can select an approach while talking to an NPC, from intimidating them to bribing them, and that at least gives the player character some level of agency.

The choices

Let me piggyback on the previous entry: There are frequently choices at the end of a quest chain that are pretty interesting to behold. You’ve spent a chunk of time getting to know the characters, the situation, and the developments, and now you can influence the outcome of the story. True, this usually only changes how the final scene plays out, but still, that’s kind of cool and gives great closure.

The twists

I have serious respect for the writers of this game because they are masters of setting up mysterious situations and then injecting narrative-shifting twists in the middle of them. In Tamriel, things often are not what they first appear to be, and I love having my expectations subverted in delightful ways.

The conclusions

And finally, I truly love seeing how a quest arc concludes with story, choice, and a closing scene. When you hand in a quest, don’t scamper away — often the NPCs will continue to talk or take actions as a follow-up to the events of the past half-hour. It’s almost always worth experiencing.

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