» Tue Dec 06, 2011 3:53 pm
Go play Fable.
The Elder Scrolls is one of the few champions of the single-player story flag, and I love it for that.
The more you include multiplayer options, especially in a series so heavily weighted in its canon, the more you invite problems with the story and how it's executed, especially with what's canon and what's not.
I consider this series to be a sacred ground of the single player experience, the depth of that sort of adventure and storytelling that can be had, that everyone can be the Frodo that tips the balance in their own story, per their own terms.
Everything else is so heavily weighted to the multiplayer mentality, often to its detriment, and I don't want to ever see this see this series fall victim to that and become so much less compared to its forebears.
It's already a stretch enough to write an open-ended story wrapped around player choice the way TES series has done, going the multiplayer route would just make it ridiculous. Make that idea into any other game that can stand on its own.
Let the Elder Scrolls series be what it has always been. To change that is to truly make it something else entirely, and not what the series has been about: The individual and his/her adventure as the yet-to-be discovered hero of his/her time.