Unearthing ESO's Ancient History - a Dive into Pre-Release Builds
By Andrew | 9 Mar 2022 |
A recent post on the ESO (Elder Scrolls Online) subreddit sparked an interesting discussion on ESO’s history of development, both pre and post release. The poster noted how the famous (or perhaps infamous) Captain Kaleen, an important character in the Daggerfall Covenant main quest line, has visually changed since pre release builds of ESO, compared to today.
The post also brought up the old debate about whether players should follow Kaleen’s advice and keep the powerful artifact found at the end of the Betnikh questline, or destroy it and incur her ire. We won’t delve into that debate today, but all of this did get us curious about how some other things in ESO have changed since pre release builds, so we decided to take a dive into ESO’s history and have a look.
ESO’s ancient history - How the game looked in 2011
The oldest ESO screenshots that we could find date back to 2011, three years before the official release of the Elder Scrolls Online.
2011 Daggerfall in ESOFirstly, we get an insight into how graphics looked earlier in ESO’s development, with this image of Daggerfall, the main hub city for Glenumbra, showing us a very different color palette and lighting model to the game we know and love today.
The Elder Scrolls Online's pre-release UINext, we can take a look at this old picture from Moonlit Maw, a cave in Stormhaven. Not only are the graphics noticeably different, but we also see a completely different UI, which seems to include a combat log integrated with the chat window, as well as an unfinished implementation of a mini map.
This never made it into the final game, currently only PC players can see a mini map on their UI by installing an add-on that provides this feature.
This never made it into the final game, currently only PC players can see a mini map on their UI by installing an add-on that provides this feature.
Moving on to ESO in 2012
In 2012, Zenimax started to release a few teaser screenshots from ESO. It’s clear from most of these that development had moved along quite a bit, but there are still plenty of interesting insights into the game’s early days.
An old model of ESO's OrcsMy favorite of these has to be this image showing us how Orcs used to look. I believe this is actually Skordo the Knife, another staple character in the Daggerfall Covenant.
The profile of the Orc is a little different to what we have today, with a smaller head and a giant hulking body, somewhat reminiscent of World of Warcraft Orcs, although it’s hard to tell how much of that is because of his absolutely massive armor.
A 2012 Bone Colossus in ESO
A 2012 Daedroth in the Elder Scrolls OnlineHere we also get to see how some enemies used to look. Especially eye-catching is the almost metallic appearance of the Bone Colussus. They are certainly very different to the enemies we are used to seeing in ESO today. Which version do you think looks more imposing?
The old design for Daedroths is also seen here, with a somewhat more reptilian appearance. It seems they decided to go with a more demonic, blue tinted design for Daedroths in the final game, probably to fit the overarching theme of invading Daedra from Molag Bal’s realm of Coldharbour, which has a similar aesthetic.
A pre-release skin for ESO's OgrimsWe hope you enjoyed this look at the history of ESO.
by
Andrew
9 Mar 2022
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