Gold Road, the new chapter of Elder Scrolls Online, takes you to a region of Tamriel that you may already know from Oblivion. The return to familiar places not only awakens nostalgic memories, many players are also excited about the attention to detail of the time travel.
What does Gold Road do really well? The new chapter of Elder Scrolls Online sends your hero to the Westgroves since June 3, 2024, a zone that fans of the franchise could already explore in parts in Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion – only that there are nearly 800 years between the two games.
If you’re having a déjà vu now: The Blackwood chapter already used the popular Oblivion adventure as a nostalgic anchor in 2021, but at that time, the Dark Forest, the imperial city of Leyawiin, and the main villain Mehrunes Dagon were the focus of the expansion.
The new chapter, on the other hand, takes you to the Gold Road and to Skingrad, another imperial city known for its wine and the nearby castle. And just like in Blackwood, the developers manage once again to successfully transform the iconic locations into a modern guise while conveying a sense of “familiar yet distinctly different.”
The launch trailer of Elder Scrolls Online – Gold Road:
Gold Road as a nostalgic journey into the past
What does the community praise in detail? In several threads and posts on Reddit, many players specifically praise how well the developers at Zenimax have managed to bring the city of Skingrad to life in Elder Scrolls Online.
- Nayrael writes (via Reddit): “Yes, I think this is Zenimax Online Studios’ best work so far regarding ‘nostalgic cities’. It really looks like an older version, not just because some parts have not been built yet, but also because it feels … well, it feels a little more early medieval than the TES4 version.”
- oh_ataraxia raves (via Reddit): “I was really happy just walking around … the small alleys, the clutter, the decorations, everything looks great.”
- championoffandango makes a comparison (via Reddit): “I love it and it is a much more realistic representation than what they did with Solitude. Cities constantly change and shift, even if their core remains the same. Having a city that remains unchanged for nine hundred years is kind of ridiculous.”
The images from Reddit user Thorolhugil underscore how closely the developers of ESO have stuck to the model from Oblivion:
In a post under the images, Thorolhugil added many details that stood out, such as the fact that the northern area of the city has not yet been developed in ESO. There is still farmland in Gold Road. However, some low fortifications already indicate the high defensive wall that protects the north side of the city in Oblivion.
You can find a specific image comparison between Oblivion and Gold Road below. In the images, you see the chapel that stands in the center of the city and has successfully withstood wind, weather, and conflicts over the centuries.
How is Gold Road being received otherwise so far? The new chapter of the MMORPG had quite a difficult start. Even before the launch, visitors from the public test server were frustrated that the Westgroves would be smaller compared to regions of other chapters .
Even more serious, however, is the feedback so far about the new system of scriptwriting, which allows you to individually adapt skills from various skill lines to your own needs. There are a total of eleven new skills, and more than 4,000 combination possibilities are claimed to be feasible.
However, since only the Tamriel heroes who possess Gold Road have access to the new skills, the accusation of Pay2Win arises. At least if the new skills turn out to be the clear best choice for PvP.
In addition, the grind to earn the skills with all customization options across multiple active characters is very time-consuming. It certainly doesn’t help that the quality of the quests related to scriptwriting is also criticized. More about this can be found here: The major feature of Elder Scrolls Online: Gold Road revives the Pay2Win discussion
