Elder Scrolls Online - Interview @ PC Games Hardware

PC Games Hardware took the time to interview Game Director Matt Firor to as a few questions about his recently launched MMO Elder Scrolls Online.

PCGH: You've developed a completely new engine for TESO but started the development process with the HERO engine. Why did you chose to start working on a completely new engine? 

Matt Firor: ESO is a hugely complex technical feat, so we needed literally years to build a stable game client and server infrastructure that was tuned to the needs of the game: tons of players on screen, very tolerant of network latency, etc. We wanted to get started on game basics while this was happening, so we licensed the Hero Engine, because it was perfect for what we needed at that time: easy to get up and running, easy to get art assets into the game and prototype how our content system would work. We then slowly swapped out Hero components with our own custom-tailored engine, starting with the server and network communications, then content creation tools, the client renderer, and the rest of the engine.

PCGH: Our first tests of the ESO Beta show that the engine does a very good job in regards to scaling up and down on high-end as well as more dated hardware. Can you describe the efforts you took to configure the engine so well that it now seems to work with many different hardware components?

Matt Firor: If you start with scalability in mind, it makes it much easier to develop a tolerant graphics engine. We do have a min spec, and the game looks very different on it than it does on a top-of-the-line rig. I love this, as I can play the game on my home or work PC at high-res, but can play when I'm on the road on my Macbook Air as well - it's a slightly different graphical game experience, but the basics are all there.

PCGH: Gamers like to compare ESO's graphics-wise with Skyrim a lot. Do you think that's fair given the fact that ESO is an MMORPG and Skyrim is a singleplayer-RPG?

Matt Firor: There's art style comparisons and there's engine comparisons. Our art style was created to be reminiscent of all the (modern) Elder Scrolls games, so players of Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim felt at home. That is mostly independent of engine requirements. But yes, you can tell that Skyrim was developed for the purpose of giving one player a really awesome graphical experience. With ESO, we have to be mindful that hundreds of players will have to be on screen at some point and the engine had to be built with that as a foundation, which led to the highly optimized engine we have today.