The Elder Scrolls Online: Necrom

There's mush-room to roam in Tamriel

Out of the mists of our cursed internet connection, a figure with a bird perched upon his shoulder emerges. It’s ZeniMax’s creative director Rich Lambert – and that avian is his African Grey parrot Poppy. Perhaps an irregular set up for an interview, it’s nothing compared to the strangeness that will ensue this June.

Pitched as ‘Elder Scrolls meets cosmic horror,’ Lambert explains why the team chose to move in this direction for the MMORPG’s upcoming expansion.

“One of the things we always make sure of is we want it to feel very different,” he begins. “If we can make it feel different than anything we’ve ever done before, that’s obviously a huge thing. But it has to feel very different than the thing we just did. If we didn’t do that, then there’d be lots of fatigue and players would get bored.”

Poppy chirps approvingly.

“Thanks, Poppy. She’s in here agreeing with me all the way,” Lambert quips before continuing, “So when we initially kind of stumbled upon the idea of Hermaeus Mora, that was really kind of like this huge differentiator – like ‘Holy cow! This is eldritch horror!’ […] How do we make that accessible in ESO, [and] what kind of stories can we tell?”

Hermaeus Mora is a Daedric Prince known for having various otherworldly appendages stuck into many pies throughout Tamriel’s history. The long tail of the Elder Scrolls’ timeline leaves key moments open to interpretation, and Lambert argues this aspect makes it particularly well suited to telling tales of mind-bending strangeness.