Elder Scrolls Online (Ep 02) - a podcast by Icel Media

In this episode of THE BURN, hosts Aviv Icel Manoach and Omer Timetwister Kaplan talk about ZeniMax Online Studios' MMORPG The Elder Scrolls Online, and the Google's new game streaming service, Stadia.

Original recording date - November 27th, 2019.

Game of the Show: The Elder Scrolls Online

Published by ZeniMax Online Studios, MSRP $20, Buy on Humble (Partner Link)

The ultimate Elder Scrolls experience (Omer played Skyrim, can’t go through the opening sequence again).

The emphasis is on storytelling and questing, everything is VO’d (100GB download) and not level grinding (almost doesn’t matter since the world scale with you).

Huge world, you can teleport and do quests everywhere - there are markers for side quests, local story arcs and main story arc. 

Skill system reminds me a lot of Guild Wars: You have racial skills, class skills and weapon skills based on what you equip (so you can build anything you want to RP pretty much). 

In-game real-money purchases are cosmetics for the most part + small DLCs which is super awesome. ESO Plus (subscription) unlocks everything while you pay.

News: Google Stadia

Google has come out with its highly anticipated cloud-streaming gaming service. It has limited availability worldwide, requires monthly subscription as well as paying for each game separately.

There were several issues raising with Stadia’s release: hardware problems, game optimisation issues, allegations that despite Google promising 4K streaming they cannot guarantee those levels of performance.

As with every new gaming platform or console, the performance issues will be resolved eventually. Developers don’t have enough experience with the platform yet, which is why they’re using upscale resolution instead of native 4K. But those sort of issues were also present with every new console generations – devs need time to learn the system well enough to optimise for it properly.

As for the higher macro question of the Stadia’s place in the gaming space, we believe that even if it turned out as a failed product, Google will use the technology behind it to continue to advance and innovate, the same way they did with “failed” product such as Glass, Wave and Google Plus.

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