The Elder Scrolls Online Interview

At this year’s Summer Game Fest Play Days, Bethesda was on-site to discuss The Elder Scrolls Online, including its change to a seasonal model, and new and upcoming content for Season One, which will launch on July 8, 2026. RPGamer was given the opportunity to sit down and speak with Director Nick Giacomini and Associate Design Director Jason Barnes. The Elder Scrolls Online is currently available on PC, Mac, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.

Jordan McClain (RPGamer): The change to a seasonal model reflects a major change to updates for The Elder Scrolls Online. What motivated this change, and how do you think it’ll positively affect the game’s trajectory going forward?

Nick Giacomini: Sure. Yeah, I’ll start. Okay, let’s see… where to begin? So, yes, major change for us. For those familiar with The Elder Scrolls Online, like, we had this chapter model for a very long time, right? We kicked it off in 2017 with Morrowind, and every single year, new chapter. But it was a massive commitment and undertaking in order to take it on. Like all hands on deck, right? And the lead time was about two years, 18 – longer than that in some ways, but right? It was just like everybody working to do this.

And on the one hand, it was great. It was very consistent. It provided players with a lot that was predictable. Like players could expect a new zone, right, with the chapter, usually a feature accompanying it, some dungeons throughout the year and so on. But it was also very limiting as a result, right? Because it was such a massive undertaking, because it was such a commitment so far out, such a major lead time, that left less room to take player feedback, right? And incorporate that in, right? I mean, if a new chapter comes out and players are talking about this, we’re already well into the next chapter, right?

So very limited ability to pivot, react, et cetera. So, that was one major limitation of it. And the other thing was, again, it was very, I mean, players characterize it often as formulaic, right? Like, predictable. And so, some of the ways that seasons are going to be beneficial is that it breaks us free of that, right? It allows us to do more, more rapidly, incorporate player feedback more often, listen to players, iterate on it, like, based on that, and just be a lot more flexible, more exciting, less predictable for players.

It also, instead of like one major drop in the year, allows us to spread things out so that players have more to look forward to over the course of the year. So, those are some of the, like, reasons and some of the benefits that players, I think, are going to experience with seasons that we’re already seeing. This year is unlike anything in The Elder Scrolls Online’s history in terms of what we’re doing. They’re just a whole lot of new foundational changes that we’re making. We’re doing class refreshes, right? We’re actually mechanically, visually updating every single class. We did a ton of player experience improvements that players, you know, long standing issues, requests, the players have requested.

There’s a lot more to come. We’re building a lot of foundational systems, new ways to engage in our content. And just the old model didn’t allow us to do things like this. So, a seasonal model just gives us the ability to do more, invest more, in our foundation.

RPGamer: What can players expect with the return of the Thieves Guild, and what is the team most excited for players to experience in that regard?

Jason Barnes: I’ll grab this one. Yeah, so, the big thing for the return of the Thieves Guild is we took a look at some of the kind of like big stealth mechanics and things like that in the game. Seeing where we can improve upon things just from like, an overall game standpoint. We have a couple new additions. We have this new item called Somnal Powder, which is like a distraction mechanic. So you can get in, like throw it at a guard, and it stuns them temporarily so you can sneak around. We’ve added some more stuff in the world to make it a little bit more interactable. So, prior to this, we had these little baskets you could hop in and hide and like stealth heavy missions. Now we’ve added new things, so like pot planters, like these big ones you can hop into those. You can hide behind curtains now. So there’s a lot more just with the world itself and the interactivity with that.

But in addition to that, we’re also continuing the storyline of the Thieves Guild. That’s one of the things that we’re really excited about from like a story and narrative perspective is, we’re pushing the story forward. We’ve always in our game – we’ve always done it in a way where it’s like, you can play anything in any order. And we’re still doing that. But we had to write the story that way, too. So it never felt like there is little beats of progression here and there. But we never said, “Hey, the timeline’s advancing.” And, as of last year, we basically said, “Hey, we’re going to start moving the timeline forward.” We’re going to start telling these more. These larger stories, but some of these smaller stories too.

And Thieves Guild is a good example where it picks up after the original Thieves Guild with one of the original members named Quinn. And she’s come to Daggerfall. And there’s kind of a new guild that’s forming, and they’re dealing with a bunch of problems, and you kind of join in and help them out. You can still do it, and if you want to start off with that, you can absolutely do that. Or if you do it in order, then you get some extra stuff because you’ve played the first one and people remember you and things like that.

We’ve even started implementing new things, which, if you go to start the Thieves Guild and you haven’t done the original one, it’ll give you a little pop-up warning that’s like, “Hey, this takes place chronologically afterwards. If you want to go do that, you should go do this one first. If you don’t care, then go ahead and do that. But yeah, it’s given us an opportunity to do a lot of just kind of, like I said, adding more interactivity to the world, fleshing out the stories, more of the characters, letting the player do more stuff. We’ve added some really cool, new stealth missions during the quest where you really have to… they’re hard. Yeah, there’s some good difficulty to that.

RPGamer: Excellent. Anything you want to add?

NG: No, I think that you covered it well. I mean, in addition to that, I mean, with the Thieves Guild, like Jason just talked about, there’s a lot that’s going to be coming. So this is not going to be your typical new story zone that we’ve done in the past. So a lot of things for players to look at. New ways to engage in content like rumors, like favors, like the Sage’s Vault. And this goes back to, again, just the previous question that you asked, like, we’re just, we’re not doing the same thing, we’re not providing that predictable. Yes, it’ll absolutely be recognizably The Elder Scrolls Online. But it’s going to be, just, completely different for players. And that’s something that we’re committed to continuing to do with every single one of our releases, like, not just the same, but here’s new ways for you to engage.

RPGamer: Glenumbra is receiving a massive overhaul. How did the team go about graphically touching up this region, and are there plans to expand this to other game regions as well?

JB: Yeah, so actually, this is kind of a continuation of the refresh that we started last year, I want to say, where we looked at – we have a bunch of starter zone areas. There’s these various islands. And the art team decided to go back and kind of refresh things. It wasn’t like, “Hey, we’re redoing the entire zone.” But it was just, it’s been 12 years since we’ve launched. And so, we’ve learned a lot of stuff and, you know, our technology’s gotten better. So, that went over really well with the player base.

And so, when we were revisiting Glenumbra, we were like, well, why don’t we just keep doing this and start kind of expanding this out? So, yeah, so the team kind of took about, like the world building team and the art team, they looked at all of the housing fixtures and even things down to the grass and the trees and looked at like, “Hey, can we just update these models? Can we make them feel better? Can we go in and paint down more grass here and adjust the lighting? And so, the world building team kind of did it – just did a massive pass through everything. In some areas, it’s really subtle and others, it’s like, wow, that’s a huge improvement. We’ve gotten – a lot of feedback we’ve gotten early on was like, this is really cool. It’s not like I’m in a brand new zone, but it feels updated. It feels current.

So, I don’t want to give too much away, but it’s something as we move into the future, If we continue to revisit zones, which we likely will, we’ll also probably examine those as well and continue to update. It’s not going to be like, “Hey, we’re just going to knock them all out at once” type of thing. We’ll do it when it makes sense. But yeah, I think with all the feedback and everything we’ve gotten and how well it’s been received. And just how it makes the game feel more current and up to date, it’s absolutely something we’ll continue to do going forward.

NG: One thing to add. Yeah, exactly. And, this again is just, players spent – a few things. First, when we talk about this being, we’ve said, stated publicly, we want this to be a 30-year-old game. And we’re hopefully much longer than that. But let’s start there. And we’re almost halfway there. But when you really think about that, that doesn’t mean just adding new zone. It doesn’t mean just adding the next big thing. A lot of that is changing, updating, evolving the foundation of the game. And we’re certainly doing that with a lot of the features like the class refresh. But this is another example of that. We’re here. We have these beautiful zones that players love. That haven’t been touched too much in, you know, 12 years in this case, right? And this is just another opportunity for us to, you know, update these areas that are very popular. They’re beloved, and allow us to tell stories and do new things in them. So, like Jason said, we’re not quite ready to talk about so far in the future. But it wouldn’t surprise me if we continued to, you know, revisit zones going forward.

RPGamer: Sheogorath is returning with a new questline. How does Season One plan to incorporate his presence and keep his appearance and interactions feeling fresh and interesting? Does the shift to seasons impact how you write him?

JB: I’ll take that one too. Yeah. I think, one: when we were talking about bringing Sheogorath back, we were looking at, like, “Well, why would we bring him back? What type of story do we want to tell, and things like that? And one of the things that was surprisingly lacking in ESO was stories that actually brought you around the world. A lot of times they were very focused on the zone you were in or a specific area. “Oh, it’s the Haunted Mine, right? So there’s going to be a quest around that. And then when we were looking at it, we realized, “Hey, there’s not actually, like, you really don’t get a whole lot of quests where you go from multiple zones and do things like that. So we had been kind of cooking up some ideas for Sheogorath before we officially kind of launched into it. And it kind of hit on that piece that we were missing, and we decided that we were going to do a new quest type. We’re calling them Tales of Tamriel.

And they basically – it’s a new area in your journal and it essentially means, “Hey, you’re going to go all around the world. It’s not just going to be one zone.” And so, as we were talking about with the writing team and our lead writer, Bill Slobsek, we talked about, like, well, what would it be? Would it be fun to do a story about Sheogorath coming into the world and basically going on vacation and deciding he wants to see what it’s like to be mortal? And, so, he’s going to put his powers aside temporarily and go experience things like cheese festivals and walk around, right?

And of course, as you would expect with Sheogorath, everything just unfolds into chaos. People are trying to steal his power, he’s corrupting things, there’s dogs playing cards in bars, right? And through the course of six quests where you’re kind of traveling all over the world with him, it kind of gives us a unique perspective of seeing Sheo in a new way. Like, he’s crazy as hell. That’s never going to change. But kind of seeing it where he’s almost, not, I wouldn’t say vulnerable, but you know, he’s a little like, “Oh, this is uncomfortable. I’m not sure I really like doing this.” And then, just yeah, the player being there and going through all the hijinks of everything and the craziness that’s going to unfold. So, it did let us kind of tell a story using a character in a new perspective, especially a character that’s so beloved by the Elder Scrolls franchise.

But to get to your Seasons question, I think that is something that it gives us this opportunity to do stuff like this, where it’s not necessarily where it fits into any specific thing, but it’s something the team wants to do. It’s something that we’re like, “Hey, we want to tell this new type of story. We want to try this new type of content.” And with the seasonal model – before it was with chapters, it was like, where does it fit in this chapter? And now it’s like, hey, let’s just slot this in, get the team to do it, get happy with it, play through it. And then it’s like, okay, cool. And then we can fit it into this part of one of the seasons and slide in there. It just allows us to experiment a lot with more stuff, try new things, or if we just want to do a fun, zany questline like the Sheogorath questline, we absolutely can just say, “Hey, we’re going to slot this into a Season.” It’s not necessarily related to the Thieves Guild, but it’s fun, it’s new content, and players are really excited about it. So yeah, it ended up working out really well.

RPGamer: The Sage’s Vault represents an interesting pivot away from combat-focused gameplay. How did the team go about designing these areas, and what’s the motivation behind experimenting with this type of gameplay?

NG: I’ll start with the motivation. Motivation came from what we’ve been talking about, again, there was so much in the past, like, a chapter was a chapter, right? And that came with a very familiar set of things. And Sage’s Vault is a great example. This is something that I remember Jason, you and I talked about, it’s like a long time ago, where we wanted to do something just completely different, right? And provide content that players had never experienced before, and this sort of was the results of that. It was like, how can we provide new, fun, interesting ways to engage? It’s not that it was completely unvaried before. There was variation in the past in terms of what we did, but a lot of it was focused on, you know, kill, scout, fetch, things like that. And, well, how about providing players, with just completely new things that either they haven’t seen before, or they’ve seen very little of, and can we create a gameplay loop that’s kind of like around this for them to look forward to, experiment with, and so on. So that, that’s motivation. And Jason, you want to talk about…?

JB: Yeah. And as for the actual content, one of the things we really challenged the team to do was think outside the box. It has been, you know, when you do a class, you can get experimental with it and try new things, and we’ve often done that, but we’ve never said, “Hey, like, what if we just completely threw all the rules away and just decide to start from the ground up and do whatever we wanted to try to do stuff?” So, we kind of… we took a step back and we said, okay, we want this to accomplish two things, really.

One, we want an interesting gameplay loop where I go in, there’s randomization to it, but each room is fun. It has a unique challenge, whether – and there is a little combat. It’s not as combat heavy as like a dungeon or a trial or, or one of our arenas, but you may go into a room where there’s like poison filling in the room and you have to, like, fight through monsters and turn the poison off by killing certain things. But then you may go into a room that’s more stealth oriented, and it’s these Khajit songstresses who are singing and you – they’re completely, like, in the shadows, and you have to figure out where they are – but if you go through water or you end up fighting something that creates noise and they start teleporting around, and so you have to figure out how to, like, track them down and get rid of them without creating too much.

Or, we have like a giant room that’s all these star bridges, and you have to pull these levers and these bridges appear, and you have to, like, run and do these little jumping puzzles before time runs out to get to different things, but it’s not like a straight path. It’s hidden paths, things you have to fall down into, things where you have to sometimes jump off of one bridge and fall to an area you wouldn’t expect. So just having a fun gameplay loop for each individual room that’s also rewarding, like every time you go in and do a room, you get a chest, you get a bunch of loot for it.

But then underneath it all, there’s all these puzzles and secrets – every room has a secret to it – and those rooms tie to other rooms, and we’ve left it very vague because we want the community to really dive into it and figure it out. But you have to figure out: What is the secret of this room? How does it connect to something else? And then how does that connect to the other room? And then, ultimately, if you put that all together and solve the giant puzzle of the Sage’s Vault, you unlock this really cool griffin mount, and that’s the only way you can get it, so you’ll be able to see the players who really dove into it. But the other fun thing, too, in addition to that is, like, as a player who just wants to play through and do some fun things and get loot, you can absolutely do that.

We also have these fun rooms called jackpot rooms. Essentially, you have a chance of when you go through a door, it’s a small percentage – and we’re still tweaking the numbers and how it shows it – it’s a giant treasure room. Essentially, you come into it and there’s just either treasure chests everywhere and it’s free-for-all loot, or like resource nodes and like crafting and fishing spots that have expensive fish that you can get out of them and stuff, and those are just kind of random things. So even if you do complete and figure out the puzzle and do everything, there’s still a reason to come back and do this over and over again. So, yeah, we’re really excited, it’s totally different. Lots of new things that we’ve never tried before. We’re going to see how players respond and then, you know, it’s something that if people really like, we’ll continue to expand on in the future.

RPGamer: Is there anything you’d like readers, players, or new players to know about Season One?

NG: Anything for players to know about Season One?

JB: There’s a lot!

NG: Yeah, there’s a lot.

RPGamer: [laughs] Go for it. The floor’s open!

NG: Let’s see… say things to players. First, just, I don’t get to say this enough, but I should. So, heartfelt thank you, first of all, to all of our players. This game is, I’ve said this in the past, but you know, we’re nothing without our players.

And yeah, so I’ll start with that. And Season One, I think, is going to be a culmination of a lot of what we’ve been talking about, like leading up to this, where it is very recognizably Elder Scrolls Online, right? It’s Thieves Guild, we’re returning to Glenumbra, like you just talked about. Sheogorath is going to be there, so it’ll be very familiar, and yet this is going to be completely different, as well. We are providing players new ways, new fun ways to engage in content, like the Sage’s Vault, like Rumors, like Favors, like dynamic encounters, like challenge difficulty. You know, we’re reinvesting in our classes, right, and refreshing combat. The werewolf is coming out – the werewolf refresh: mechanical and visual update.

So, we’re… to our players, you know, this is us, we’re providing a lot that’s going to be familiar, but a lot that’s going to be different, and we’re trying to address, you know, a lot of what players have been asking us for. To be less predictable, to be less templated, to be more experimental, and this is hitting on a lot of things specifically that players have been asking for feedback that’s come through. And we’re listening. We sincerely hope that players like it. If they don’t, though, like, let us know. And we’re always listening, we’re trying to improve, we’re trying to take that feedback and trying to build this game together.

You know, I’ve talked about this in the past, but Elder Scrolls Online, for many of us, you know, like, MMOs can be pretty conducive to this generally, but this is a home for many players, like myself included. And players should have a – if it’s their home, they should have a say in how it’s built – and I think that Season One is going to be… We’ve talked about how we’re embarking on this journey with players to co-develop the game with them, or to listen to them, or to implement their feedback more, and I think Season One is going to provide a lot of that. It’s not everything; there’s a lot more to come, but, you know, to players, I hope that this is exciting, new, and also familiar, and, looking forward to seeing how you reckon. Let us know what you think and what you’d like from us.

RPGamer: Excellent. Jason?

JB: Yeah, just to add to that, I think there’s… the other thing too is there’s a little bit of something for everyone. You know, if you’re more of a casual quester, then Season One really is the big, like, content drop of the new story, the new quests. You know, we have a new system called Rumors, which is really cool. It’s these… just things you find out in the world, they don’t really have any UI – there’s a UI element that will track it in your journal – but we don’t give you clues, we don’t tell you where to go. It’s a mystery. So you pick up a note, you read it, and just by deducting what is in that note, you have to figure out where to go next.

And adding more things into the world itself, I think, is really important for us as we go forward, because we want to add new content, we want to add new things, new areas. But we also just want to flesh out what you do as the player as you’re playing through the game and give you more opportunities to… If you don’t feel like questing, maybe you go do something else. And we have a new Veterancy system coming with PVP for those players, so that’s an advancement and progression for any way you want to PVP. We have a new trial coming out at the end of Season One. It’s our first base game trial since… base game. [laughs]

And then even beyond that, we have solo dungeons. We’re taking some of the group dungeons and converting them so that you can play them, in your group still, or you can do a unique experience where you go in as a solo player. Yeah, dynamic encounters, which we talked about a little bit earlier, where just new things spinning up in the world that you just randomly come across. Like At’avar being attacked, and then other players can hop in. So we really are trying to just hit everything, have a little bit of new stuff for any type of player, and then even like, our power gamers, which is really cool, is our new challenge difficulty, where you can make things harder in the game now. So you can do a quest and max it out to what’s called Veterancy and it’s just, or is it…

NG: Vestige?

JB: Vestige mode, yeah. Sorry, mixing up my v’s. Vestige mode, where it’s, like, things will one and two-shot you if you’re not playing, and all of a sudden, now people who were playing through a quest and enjoyed those, but felt like things were too easy, now all of a sudden, now you can play through that and have to pay attention to every little attack, and really make sure you’re doing things right. And there’s all different tiers of difficulty for all players to be able to adjust that. So, yeah, we’re just, we’re trying to do things to make the world more engaging, more things for players to do, and really, like I said, give a little bit of everything to all types of players. And that’s just something as we move forward, we’re really going to hammer on and just keep doing.