The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim was a game so titanically vast you could lose yourself in it for hundreds of hours and still stumble across new places. The fact that Skyrim is just one region of Tamriel tells you all you need to know about the mind-blowing potential of The Elder Scrolls Online, which splices this scale with a population of thousands of real players. While the landmass is just as intimidatingly endless as you’d imagine, the experience of playing Tamriel Unlimited lacks the atmosphere and solemnity of the earlier single-player games. Wherever you go you’ll find players running in all directions, swarming enemies and standing in loose gaggles around important points in quests, blasting immersion-breaking drum’n’bass over voice chat or talking loudly to other people in the room with them. Mechanically things fair slightly better, its relatively dull quests underpinned by solid combat and complex, hard-won upgrade paths. It’s not pretty, never coming close to last month’s Witcher 3, and can feel a little monotonous as you trudge between similarly structured busy work, although it is very early days for a game designed to be played for months on end.
