Elder Scrolls Online Is Journeying To The Dark Heart of Skyrim
(Photo by Jason Merritt/Getty Images)
At The Game Awards Zenimax Online announced the next round of content for Edler Scrolls Online – and we’re headed to Skyrim!
Elder Scrolls Online is currently celebrating “The Year of the Dragon” – their latest expansion Elsweyr heavily focuses on dragons and unleashing dragon enemies around the game.
What’s weird is that “The Year of the Dragon” took place in Elsweyr and not the Skyrim landmass.
Everyone that’s played Skyrim knows how big of a deal adding dragons to that game was. They were big, epic creatures that had the risk and reward of fighting a boss. They were visually impressive and, most important, fun to fight. But more then that: they were a central instrument to the plot of Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.
During the plot of Skyrim the player learns of the history of dragons in Tamriel, since dragons didn’t play a central role in any of the 4 previous Edler Scrolls games. Dragons were once worshiped as Gods and played a central role in Skyrim culture. The leader of the dragons, Alduin, considered himself a God and look to rule over all of Mundus (that’s the plane of existence that Tamriel exists in). This led to a rebellion by the humans of Skyrim and the betrayal of Alduin’s sibling and general, Paarthurnax, who taught the human how to wield the power of the dragon language and special ability known at “the voice”.
Much of these plot contrivances were necessary because of the technical limitations preventing Bethesda from adding in gigantic creatures like dragons prior to Skyrim. So, with all of this lore existing around dragons in Skyrim – why are they appearing in Elsweyr?
I won’t ruin it for you but there are reasons.
So, what does this have to do with going back to Skyrim? Possibly a lot.
Most ESO fans are thinking that the Skyrim tease implies that it will be the next expansion, and rightly so. The tease felt bigger than other small DLC teases we’ve got in the past and Zenimax even updated their website saying:
“Yes, you saw right. We have teased next year’s big adventure right at the end there, too, taking you back to the snow-swept region of Skyrim! You’ll have to wait until our announcement show to learn more.”
So, it seems pretty likely that the Skyrim chapter will be fairly lengthy and not just a tacked on endcap mission for the Elsweyr chapter. But could the two stories intersect? That seems possible.
And then there’s the question of which parts of Skyrim we’ll be going to. We already have parts of the landmass available in Elder Scrolls Online, such as the Eastmarch area as well as The Rift, but what exactly is “the dark heart of Skyrim”?
After talking about it with the rest of the Checkpoint XP crew, we think that we’ll be headed to the north western portion of the Skyrim province and adventuring in the Solitude and Markarth section of the map. The reason why we think this is because in the teaser trailer we see our Nord friend looking down from a vista at what looks like a valley with a river. We believe that this character is coming from Solitude and moving toward Markarth. The river seen in the teaser appears very winding which makes us think that this is the river in The Reach which eventually ends near Markarth. Since there’s more snow than marsh this makes us believe that The Reach is a more likely location than Hjaalmarch which would have more of a marshy quality to the land.
So, could we be heading into Skyrim to do something about the other dragons plaguing Tamriel? Maybe there’s some time travel and we end up helping the three legendary Nords send Alduin forward in time to meet his demise at the feet of the last Dragonborn?
Only time can tell us now….