The Elder Scrolls Online brings dragons as new super monsters in the new addon Elsweyr. This confuses many lore fans, but there are still good reasons for the giant lizards in the game.
Why are dragons a supposed lore problem in ESO? The Elder Scrolls Online is based on a vast lore background. So if developers want to incorporate something into the game, they need to be careful that nothing conflicts with the already established facts in the game world.
Therefore, the announcement of dragons in ESO caused astonishment. Because as every fan knows, the scaled fire-breathers only become a topic again in Skyrim with the appearance of Alduin and his kin.
Skyrim takes place over 1,000 years after the events in ESO. So how can it be that dragons were unleashed upon Tamriel beforehand? Do the developers, like the designers of dragons in Elder Scrolls: Legends, not know their own lore?
The solution to the dragon problem
That’s why dragons also make sense in ESO’s time: In our reveal stream for Elsweyr, this question was eagerly discussed among you viewers. Fortunately, we had the German ESO community manager Kai Schober in the stream, who was quickly asked about the topic.
Kai replied that the storytelling of ESO does not happen from an all-knowing perspective. If you find a book in the game that reports on a specific event from the past, that does not mean that this source is necessarily correct.
So when it says “There were no dragon appearances before the Skyrim events,” that is the viewpoint of the author of that source and may not necessarily be entirely true.
Here was already a hint about the ESO dragon story: Kai even went further and named a concrete piece of evidence for the story from ESO. According to an obscure source from the game Oblivion, there was already a “dragon break,” i.e., a dragon appearance in the province of Elsweyr during the second era.
There is also a good explanation for this. As every ESO player knows, the time of the game is an extremely chaotic, turbulent era. The Empire has crumbled, necromancer cults summon daedric anchors from the sky, and three warring factions fight in the Alliance War for supremacy.
In these chaotic times, one cannot expect accurate and enduring historiography, and due to the many battles and catastrophes, many records get lost. So it is quite possible that even an extreme event like a dragon break did not receive the spotlight it would have garnered in more peaceful times.
Dragons, but no dragon blood
That’s why the dragons in ESO are worse than in Skyrim: So there will be a similar “dragon break” in ESO as in Skyrim. So the same procedure again? Not at all, as the developers revealed in the stream a significant difference: In ESO, there is no Dovahkiin!
Unlike the dragon-slaying superhero from Skyrim, you cannot simply call down any dragons with your shouts and take them out single-handedly. So when a dragon appears in ESO, you should first run! And only come back when you have friends and a good strategy.
The dragons, especially the overlord Kaalgrontiid, should provide truly exciting battles that both fit the lore and should represent truly unique experiences in the game.
Furthermore, dragons could lead to more players in ESO:
