The User Interface
There is the User Interface while fighting. Minimal, non-intrusive, non-immersive breaking, and clean. There is a complete absence of clutter on the screen, which is how the single player Elder Scrolls games play and look.
No mini-map, no numbers flying by, just simple and clean interface. The beauty behind this clutter free UI? Players are more involved in what is going on than they are concerned with the amount of damage or a mini-map which points out every little detail for them. To be honest, more than once I’ve forgotten to hide my UI when taking a screenshot and it hasn’t diminished the beauty of that screenshot. That says A LOT about the quality and functionality of the UI.
Just like the single player games, ESO rewards the player for exploration. Chests tucked away in far off little corners of the world, Skyshards in unexpected locales, or on object or NPC that leads to some amazing quest chain you wouldn’t have discovered just standing around in town.
This is the UI when you have your inventory open (yes, I’m riding my Imperial Edition horse.) This interface too is simple to understand and uncluttered. I cannot begin to tell you how much the clean and simple UI has grown on me, every other game’s interface is now cumbersome and tedious.
Graphics
The game is stunningly beautiful. More times than I can count I stopped just to take a screenshot, just because it was so pretty. The environments are amazing, details like snakes slithering through grass or frogs and toads frolicking in the water or swamp. The world is a living and breathing place and your character feels like an integral part of that world.
The User Experience
The user experience is fantastic if you understand that this isn’t your typical MMO. If you play ESO and expect everything to be face-roll easy with everything handed to you then you will be extremely displeased and disappointed. ESO expects their player base to think and be willing to explore and figure things out. Do not expect to play ESO and be able to spam a dungeon finder queue to level your character, and may Zenimax Online never make the mistake of placing a dungeon finder system in the game.
Questing is awesome but more on that in an upcoming post. The overall user experience is superb. NPCs are humorous or having their own petty squabbles that do not involve the player at all. There has been a consistent concern that given the MMO aspect of the game, how is it possible that your character can rise to be the hero? To be honest, my experience has been that I forgot that the other player characters are doing things similar to my character.
There are fights that are vastly more difficult than others, and the assumption that you should be able to kill a quest level boss because you are of equal level is an invalid assumption. Fights can be quite challenging and I love it. I love that if I’m lazy or careless my character will die. I love that failure to think strategically or tactically results in a far more difficult fight than if I thought about it or paid attention to boss mechanics during a fight. Any game that rewards the careful and intelligent player is doing it right.
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