The Elder Scrolls Online: Greymoor - Review

Every year, when the Elder Scrolls Online releases a new expansion, I think that this is the time I will get stuck into it for real, but each year, I fall off the game quickly. The chance to return, at least to part of Skyrim, was a massive draw this time, but is that draw strong enough to hold my interest, or is it better to just remember my first trip there?

Vampires have risen up across Western Skyrim and formed an alliance with the Ice Reach Coven, witches who specialise in powerful native magic and your arrival, will see you thrown into the deep end of this latest event to befall Tamriel. Once you start on that path, you will meet Fennorian, a vampire who is on the trail of the witches, in the hopes of discovering what they are doing, and while a vampire, he carries with him a bottle of blood, to avoid going crazy. Once you reach Solitude, you will encounter Lyris Titanborn, a Nord warrior and part giant, who, if you played from day one, will be familiar to you. Together, the pair of you being investigating what is going on and discover Harrowstorm, magical events that draw life energy from the people and creatures of the world. While the High King does not believe this is a threat, the Queen does, but events transpire quickly, and it is left up to you and your new companions to discover just how large the threat is and to stop it. The main quest is pretty fun, while set in Western Skyrim, there are plenty of new locations to visit as well, which helps make the story feel grounded.

The setting of Skyrim, or at least the Western most portion of it, is a blessing and a curse, but let’s start off with why its good, it is Skyrim. Seriously though, there is something special about roaming the wilds of Skyrim all over again, but with the story taking place 1000 years before Alduin and his revenge tour of the northern lands. It is also a few hundred years before Tiber Septim begins to conquer Tamreil, which then unites the land, so while there are a few things, like Solitude and other major towns that are present, the rest of the world is almost completely different, which is so much fun. Of course, the world is full of animals and people going about their lives, but the biggest addition are the Harrowstorm, think stationary twisters, full of red light, that take up a massive part of the sky, these locations are a danger to visit, thanks in part to what they create near them and who creates them. The Vampires and their creations, the Harrowfiends are dangerous, no matter what level you are, they are fast, strong and can literally drain your life force from you, so taking them on in a fight is something you have to prepare, but each time I encountered them, I wanted to fight them.

Because there are a lot of vampires around, strange happenings are being reported and that is where a lot of the games side quests come in, they help pad out the world and the few that I did, were enjoyable. While there were countless new weapons and gear to collect, as I have little recollection of what was in the last one, I won’t worry about referencing all of that here, needless to say though, when I did encounter a particularly nasty witch, I died multiple times, forgetting to upgrade my gear, once that happened, the fight was more than fair. The other element that I enjoyed, though I did think it was odd, having entered back into Solitude, in order to present information back to the Blue Palace, someone approached me to indicate that their benefactor wanted to speak with me. Thinking this was related to the investigation, I went traipsing all the way back to the starting area, then followed the markers, but it turned out, this was the starting mission, which had me getting stuck in Coldharbour and having to escape from Molag Bal. While not the most fun thing to do, it did provide a good look at how much the locations have evolved since the game first released.

Sadly though, with the good, comes the bad and while these points are a pain, they are not horrible points, just things that don’t make much sense in the grander scheme of the game. The first, sadly, is about the world, in particular its overall size, the Western part of Skyrim is tiny, not the overall aspect of it, just the scale. For some reason, the developers scaled down the world, by a rough guess, 60%, the rivers, major roads and towns are all in the same placed, just takes a fraction of the amount of time to walk to them, as it does in the original Elder Scrolls V.  The second, is that while the combat is still ok, there is no massive innovations to it, which if it never grabbed you the first time around, that is unlikely to change here. Given that you are now fighting Vampires, I would have loved to see more options for them, rather than the same skills and attacks as always.

The presentation of the game is weird, not bad, simply weird and a lot of that stems from what the game is, an MMO, as they tend to only place the required parts in. The first Harrowstorm you encounter, is already over and as such, you see the aftermath, comprised of Harrowfiends, mutilated bears, wolves and more. When you enter an active storm area, you will find visibility reduced, a darker image and an overall feeling of being in danger from them, it has been done really well. Even when a storm is building, when you have a chance to stop it from fully forming, the effects that they bring are devastating and look amazing. While most of the characters you interact with are other players, the ones that dot the landscape of Skyrim are fine, they look similar but without the warn torn look that Elder Scrolls V had. The towns, especially the larger ones, all look similar, but again have a freshness to them, but with the 1000 years between the two periods, that is expected, but what wasn’t was how well it was done. The other aspect in the positive column was the audio, there were a host of compositions that, while similar at times to the original game, still had a sense of newness to them. Walking through the wild of Skyrim, hearing snow crunch under foot and those now icon Skyrim themed tunes, was very welcoming.

While most of the presentation was good, there were some issues, the audio issues, mostly come down to a limited voice cast for the ancillary characters, hearing the same voice from a dozen different characters threw me back to Oblivion days, and not in a good way. There was also a bit of a delay when coming back into the game from the desktop, the game would pause the audio when you left it, which is nice (there is an option to leave it on though), but I could always start running around again, before the audio kicked back in. The visuals though, they had some odd things, characters at times would sort of fade in, even when they were in normal range, like they were being beamed down to the ground from a starship or so. The other odd thing that they did, is I encountered more than once, a few that were stuck inside of objects, which was always quite the jarring visual. By far though, the biggest issue were the ground textures, for some random reason and no clear way of getting rid of them, they would suddenly warp, a mix between normal and some cloudy looking soup texture and whenever it happened, I would have to put up with it, until the game would randomly fix it.

For those who have stepped away from The Elder Scrolls Online, this is one heck of a welcome back, the location of Skyrim is charming and given that anyone who has played the Elder Scrolls V, will likely wander through, pointing out any differences, is a charming bonus. The main quest, of discovering why Vampires and Witches are working together, just what Harrowstorms are and how they can be stopped is a nice one.

There are plenty of side quests to keep your time back in Skyrim worthy of your attention and what issues are present are annoying, are not game breaking, so you shouldn’t have any issues there. While the size of the new world is smaller than what we know, there is still plenty of new locations to discover, so I say give it a go. I always tend to fall away from the game pretty quickly, but the return to Skyrim is one that I can fully get behind, so expect to see me running around a lot.

The Score

9.0

Review code provided by Bethesda

The Pros

+Returning to Skyrim is fueled by more than nostalgia, thanks to a fun story

+While a smaller land mass, there are plenty of new areas to discover

The Cons

+A host of presentation oddities pop up randomly, including odd textures

+The combat does not take advantage of fighting vampires, as much as I would have liked to