The Elder Scrolls Online's Gates of Oblivion expansion will begin with a new chapter, ESO: Blackwood. Blackwood is a swampy area in southern Cyrodiil. This borderland region is where the Imperial heartland runs up against Elsweyr, the home of the Khajiit; and Black Marsh, the home of the Argonians.

The Elder Scrolls Online will see the return of the city of Leyawiin from The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion, but will also introduce new locations and a city from the lore that hasn't been seen since the very first game, Arena. Zenimax Online Studios' CEO Matt Firor recently sat down with Game Rant and explained some of the motivation for setting the new expansion partially in Blackwood.

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Building The Elder Scrolls Online's World

elder scrolls online blackwood companions

The Elder Scrolls Online allows players to explore every province in Tamriel, but not the entirety of those provinces. As a result the MMO has been able to release new regions with each expansion, including parts of Morrowind, Elsweyr, and Skyrim that weren't in the online game's initial release. Blackwood is the latest in that series of new areas, and Firor explained the motives behind the location.

"It’s tangentially related to Oblivion, but it also has this part of Blackwood across the river in Black Marsh and the city of Gideon, which are well known in lore but no-one has ever really been to it except since Arena almost 25 years ago. It’s a cool combination of nostalgia on one side of the map and unknown, interesting new things to explore on the other. It really fits a good mold for us."

Firor's comments get to the heart of The Elder Scrolls Online's design philosophy. The MMO was originally launched on the back of Skyrim's commercial and critical success. It appealed to many fans who had been invested in the series for decades. Many Elder Scrolls Online players were excited to see old locations like Vvardenfell from The Elder Scrolls 3 brought to life in modern graphics, as well as locations from older Elder Scrolls games like Daggerfall City. However, the studio knew nostalgia alone wouldn't be enough.

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Balancing Nostalgia And The New

Main characters from Blackwood trailer posing

The Elder Scrolls Online has been able to explore some of the areas in Tamriel that were left behind by the mainline Elder Scrolls games. Fans knew the Rift well from Skyrim, for example, but The Elder Scrolls Online didn't just recreate the version of the area seen in The Elder Scrolls 5. On top of Riften, ESO added Nimalten, a small city from the lore that never appeared in the region in Skyrim. While the main Elder Scrolls games have stuck to one province since Morrowind, The Elder Scrolls Online has been able to explore borderlands like Blackwood more fully, and give them their own distinct identities.

Blackwood's combination of the familiar and the unfamiliar doesn't stop with the setting itself. The Gates of Oblivion expansion will see the return of Mehrunes Dagon, the villain of Oblivion. Fans are hoping that the new expansion feels nostalgic without feeling like it's retreading old ground. Blackwood has the potential to help ESO pull that off. With the Niben River dividing the old and the new, hopefully the region will satisfy old and new fans alike.

The Elder Scrolls Online: Blackwood launches June 1 for PC and Stadia; and June 8 for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.

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