Elder Scrolls Online!
It was kind of inevitable really. By all accounts the game is a mediocre MMO and an awful Elder Scrolls game, and the marketing has been less than effective. That the cinematic trailer would fail to inspire is unsurprising, but the level of mediocrity exceeds expectations.
Sure it’s pretty and impressive but what does it tell you about the world and the game? Nothing. Nothing about the characters, the places, the events, the motivations or how the player will enter the world. There’s a war, magic, various races and people glowering at each other. Well, that’s me hooked, I’m sure. As an exercise watch the trailer again and when the ESO logo appears at the end mentally replace it with a Dragon Age one. Or Two Worlds. Or any fantasy game to be honest. There’s literally nothing in that trailer that ties it to the Elder Scrolls world.
But it gets worse. The Elder Scrolls games have always been noted for the deep and interesting lore and history, and for not hewing too closely to the standard fantasy archetypes – Orcs aren’t just footsoldiers for the baddie-du-jour, Elves are petty, factional and as interestingly diverse as the humans, and the dwarves are just gone.
So how do they chose to advertise the game? Just look at this image:
Gosh. A bearded warrior, a brooding rogue and an elven mage lady missing her shirt. I usually try to keep this blog clean and civil, but seriously, the marketing team for Elder Scrolls Online can fuck off and die for what they’re doing to the series.