Elder Scrolls Online Interview with Rich Lambert – Into a World of Madness and Cosmic Horrors in Upcoming Expansion

With the recent reveal of Elder Scrolls Online’s latest expansion Shadow over Morrowind, we had the chance to speak with Rich Lambert, the Creative Director of Elder Scrolls Online in an interview. We go through the topics of the Necrom, the newest Arcanist class, and the realm of Oblivion – Apocrypha.

This Interview is edited for clarity.

The Shadow over Morrowind expansion is doing some deep pulls, to the point of bringing up Elder Scrolls Arena. How is it like expanding on the Elder Scrolls lore?

Rich Lambert: It’s definitely a lot of fun. Elder Scrolls is around 25 years old now. So there’s tons of lore and  lots of games for us to explore and dig through. One of our favourite things to do is to pull on little threads of obscure lore and expand on that and turn it into our own.

That’s one of the things we were able to do this time around with Necrom. Necrom is an ancient city and one of the oldest in Tamriel. If you believe all the accounts written, it was founded before the Tribunal was even created.

It’s the city of the dead where your most revered elders are buried in these elaborate ceremonies. It’s been a lot of fun to dig into that and show the city, rather than have players read it and imagine it. It also talks about one of my favourite Daedric Princes in Hermaeus Mora in this cosmic horror vibe. It’s super exciting, I can’t wait for the players to experience it.

Do you ever worry that it’s been described so much but not shown nearly as much as this expansion plans to? Do you ever worry about fans maybe going like “that’s not how I imagine Necrom to look”. 

Rich Lambert: Yes, that’s always a worry, but we’re pretty used to that at this point. We’ve been going for 8 to 9 years now, we’ve got to a lot of different locations in Tamriel along with its history and lore. There’s always a little bit of that no matter what you do, you can’t please everybody but I think players are going to be pleasantly surprised.

The cosmic horror vibe from the expansion trailer looked intriguing, could you tell us more about the Squid looking monster at the end of the trailer? 

Rich Lambert: That was Hermaeus Mora. That’s the beauty of what we’re trying to do for this year. You don’t have to know Elder Scrolls or the lore, you just have to be really intrigued by the visuals and the story to really try to dive in and learn more.

And that’s one of the things we always do every chapter. We make sure everybody can come in and pick it up, play it and understand it, rather than just for our “lore nerds” who we love so much.

About the new class – the Arcanist, with any MMO, the biggest problem with introducing a new class is always “what if everyone just plays that”, because the Arcanist looks like they have a full kit. 

Rich Lambert: It does, and that’s one of the things we strive for in all of our classes. I think that’s one of the things that really sets Elder Scrolls Online apart from other online games, is that your class doesn’t dictate your role.

Every class can fit into any role and it’s up to you how you want to set your character up. What kind of themes, vibe and feel you want to go with. Every class has access to that, and any class can use any weapon and armour type.

So if everybody suddenly decides to play the Arcanist in June, that’s okay. Because there will be plenty of tanks, healers and damage dealers out there because there’s so much versatility in that class.

For the players who would want to stick with their older characters, is there anything in it for them to try out the Arcanist? 

Rich Lambert: For the class specifically no, but there’s tons of content for you to go, tons of story to plan and explore. There’s all kinds of items, cosmetics and a new trial. There’s a lot of new stuff for those players that just want to play their class.

When we go to the Apocrypha in Skyrim, there’s a lot of instant death pits. Admittedly, instant death pits aren’t as fun in an MMO as they might be anywhere else.  Could you talk about how yo would rework that zone for MMO player’s expectations. 

Rich Lambert: We tried to be a little bit more fair in our game in terms of where you can and can’t die. But there’s still places where if you fall off ledges or from places high up, you’re going to die and hit those kinds of death pits. That’s kind of how we approach that problem and try to solve it.

Is that soft confirmation that there won’t be a trial where you have to parkour over these death pits? 

Rich Lambert: We’ve never done jumping puzzles to that degree. That’s one of the things that myself and my lead content designer Jeremy Sera always make sure the teams know and reinforce. Not everyone is a parkour master.

It’s okay to have them to a degree, but do it for side optional exploration type, nothing critical path.

That’s a good way to do it. More MMOs are doing jumping puzzles nowadays but MMO players aren’t too keen on it. 

Rich Lambert: It’s really hard to do if you need to worry about latency. It works well in single player games that don’t have to worry about latency at all. But in the MMO space, that’s absolutely a factor in designing everything.

Sometimes, some players can have 300 milliseconds ping or higher and if you’re expecting them to be able to react in less than that, they’re going to be in a world of frustration.

Just like all the other chapters in Elder Scrolls online, is Shadow over Morrowind an expansion you can just start with? 

Rich Lambert: Absolutely. That’s part of our DNA now since 2016. No arbitrary level gates stopping you from going anywhere. You can play with anybody you want and you can choose any story you want anytime.

Considering how much the cosmic horror background for the Apocrypha, it does seem kind of funny that you go from your typical MMO start to Elder Scrolls Online where now I’m in a world of Madness.

Rich Lambert: That’s the beauty of the world. There’s just so much cool stuff you can play with because it’s such a huge game. And because we’ve been around so long, we’re able to explore a lot of that stuff.

Did you design any quests or encounters specifically for players who decided that this was their first stop? 

Rich Lambert: That’s something we always try to take into account. We think that for any chapter we build, is to make sure that we are telling the entire story and not relying on the player’s knowledge on previous stuff that’s going on in the world, or having any kind of knowledge about Elder Scrolls in general.

There’s always deep lore stuff, tie ins, Easter eggs and stuff like that. But going through that critical path, it’s really important that everybody understands regardless of your knowledge level and why is it important for you to do the things you’re doing.

With the things you’re doing in the game, are they like the usual MMO stuff of “mudcrabs have gotten into Apocrypha, please kill 5 of them”. 

Rich Lambert: No, we don’t have many of those “Kill ‘X’ Quests” at all. That’s one of the things we decided early on we didn’t want to do.

The story this year is centered around Hermaeus Mora and he has this secret that they have protected closely from everybody, including other Daedric princes. There are groups that want to uncover the secrets and to know what it is, and they’re going to great lengths to try and steal it from Hermaeus Mora. You’re signed up as his Champion to protect that secret.

Can we expect any kind of Madness mechanic thrown in this new expansion? 

RIch Lambert: That’s one of the major story elements behind Apocrypha. There are creatures in the world called The Hushed that were actually humans at one point but they were driven mad and turned by spending too much time in Apocrypha and learning too much knowledge.

That’s not going to happen to the player, but at least the story elements are there for you to understand and know that the madness element is tied to everything.

Will there be any special dialogue by any particular races or classes that go into Necrom?

Rich Lambert: One of the things we always do is try to recognise the player’s accomplishments. There’s definitely tie-ins of you doing things in the world, things you’ve done previously before this. All of those things are in place like we always do.

There are some quests that have NPCs that recognise you’re an Arcanist but there aren’t specific Arcanist only quests. We want to make sure everyone can participate in these things and learn and understand what’s going on. Just flavour elements and slight little nods and stuff like that.

Last year, you were very excited about the card game in High Isle, can we play the game with Hermaeus Mora? 

Rich Lambert: No, you can’t challenge Hermaeus Mora directly. But you can play the game in Apocrypha.

Anything else you wanna say to the readers? 

Rich Lambert: I think we’ve covered the big bits. For me and the team, this is something I’m really excited about. Our global reveal happened on the 26th January and we knew people were going to be excited about this content, but it blew us away just how excited people were.

It has been overwhelmingly positive, people are really excited, and there’s just a lot of buzz and sentiment around Elder Scrolls Online and this year. So, I can’t wait to get it out to people’s hands and have them start playing it.

We would like to thank Rich Lambert for taking the time to talk about the game’s upcoming expansion. Shadow over Morrowind will be the seventh main story arc of Elder Scrolls Online and it releases later this June.

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