ESO: Interview with Michael Zenke (2023)

Welcome and thank you for taking the time for this interview. Let's jump in. What does it mean to be the Loremaster? And how would you say the position has changed from your predecessors?

Absolutely. So first I wanna say it's a pleasure talking to you. I think very highly of the work you guys do on the site. It's a lot of fun to read and to use as a resource.

So what does it mean to be the Loremaster? I see the role as sort of the ultimate support class. In the MMO triad, I'm at the back of the group making everybody else better. It's my job to interface with every single discipline in the building, at certain points in the process, to help them understand this expansive body of knowledge that is the Elder Scrolls.

As for the job … I've been a writer in the industry for a while now, well over a decade. My approach to writing and game narrative is always character focused. I find characters are an incredible shortcut to help people understand this enormous volume of stuff that's out there. If we can take something very abstract, or something really hard to understand … something like the history of The Elder Scrolls franchise spanning thousands of years, multiple continents, and different planes of existence ….

Using a character to distill down a specific element, use that as a framework to explain something to people playing the game. For me that's the secret sauce. And I want to help make characters that allow us to more lorefully engage players.

 Do you have a particular character that you truly enjoy writing for or fleshing out?

It's hard to pick your favorite kid. We’ll talk about this a little more later but when we shipped the game, I was the writer on the Mages Guild, Fighters Guild, and a bunch of different zones. The guilds were a really fun opportunity to be able to take this very storied franchise, and give them some specifics within the context of the Second Era. Motivations, politics, getting to see Vanus Galerion and talk to him. Same thing with the folks in the Fighters Guild, being able to take these monolithic organizations and turn them into more human approachable concepts. That was a lot of fun. 

 At what point did you take over as the Loremaster? Was it during High Isle, Galen, or was Necrom your first full chapter that you were solely responsible for?

I was a writer for High Isle, and then during Galen Leamon and I tag teamed. I did a lot of ride-alongs with him to help understand his process and how you approach the job. So yeah, Necrom is the first chapter that I've done that I've been in this seat the whole time.

 Was Necrom originally going to be a year long story? Or was it always planned to be multi-year?

We’ve done multi-year stories in the past, but as Rich talked about at the release event we’re excited to try and shake things up a little bit. What we’re doing now will consider a lot of things we've learned over the years. Every release, we do things a little bit differently. How can we take some of our more recent lessons and apply those to the concept of a story that spans across multiple releases? Perhaps see characters more than once?

Obviously, the next thing is still TBD. We're still working on it. Nothing’s for certain yet. But that's where we are. How can we take the knowledge and the information that we've learned over the last couple of years, and apply it to this idea that people seem to really like?

 So I am definitely looking forward to learning more about the multi year story as it develops. This leads into our next question: how far in advance do you plan out the story?

The process is a lot of fun. It takes a lot of people to make the game. It starts at the high level, with senior leadership. Folks might not be aware, but the person that does the zone lead job rotates. Whoever is going to be the zone lead for the upcoming zone, they're heavily involved in developing the story from like a tiny seed to a full-fledged document that outlines all the things that go into the zone. Everything, and I mean everything, gets written out. These are long documents that describe monsters, characters, factions, locations.

Once that's done, the zone still isn't anywhere near real yet. At that point, everybody else gets involved: encounter designers, writers, content designers, everybody gets to engage with this castle in the sky. From there it becomes: who are the characters, internally? What are the activities we're going to do at these different locations? It turns from this very ephemeral thing to something very specific. That’s the part where the development process gets really exciting really fast.

As you know we go at a pretty fast clip, in terms of putting out new content. It’s a very interesting process, and one that ZeniMax Online has down to a science at this point. Anytime we do an announcement, as we just did the Necrom announcement, we're well on our way to at least talking about what the next thing will be. And probably the next thing after that, because otherwise we're going to be behind.

 And what's your role with this process?

Like I said, I'm the support guy. I'm the bard. I'm tapped pretty early to help in terms of context, a lot of context. What are the opportunities here? If we're going back to a place that we've seen in another Elder Scrolls game, what are the things we have to have? If we're going to a new place, or a place that maybe we've only mentioned in an Elder Scrolls game, what are the things that people expect to see?

And then my favorite thing: what are the opportunities? If I say “hey, there's this lore concept over here” and “there's the stuff that we're talking about over here.” And if I draw a straight line here we can make something new and cool.

Again, it's the zone team that makes things really happen. It's the content designers, the writers, and the zone leads that are the people that pull this thing kicking and screaming into the real world. I'm just the guy making suggestions, a resource for the team. But at a very early stage having the opportunity to point those things out and try to draw attention to different places is a fun part of the process.

The thing I find I talk about most often is hyper specifics. “Hey this is a new thing we've never quite done before.” Maybe we're taking an old idea or updating it, or giving a new spin or new context to something we've talked about before. Is it something that's going to make sense inside the world? That's the most common discussion that I have with people. And that happens every single day, multiple times a day, on many different fronts.

 How do you prevent yourself from feeling burnout? With the rate that you go through creating this content?

That is a great question. For me, I've been doing this for a long time and I think what you have to do as a professional … any professional, not just a game developer … You have to make the decision for yourself about what's really important, right?

What do I actually care about? At the end of the day is this thing, whatever this thing is, going to make the game better or worse? My partner is in production, in the grocery space, and her analogy is “We're delivering bananas, right?” When things get tense she says “Folks we're delivering bananas. We're delivering bananas, not launching rockets.” And I have sort of a similar attitude.

It’s very much worth having good, honest, frank conversations about stuff. But at the end of the day you can only accomplish what you can with the hours of the day that you have. There are pinch points, there's points where we're all like, working really hard. And I try to think to myself, what's actually important here? What's the thing that, six months from now, I'm going to think about or remember?

That's the kind of stuff that I actually try to focus on. I just try to let the little things go.

What difficulties have you experienced describing things using real world terms that don't exist within the universe?

I think your example was “How do we describe Hermaeus Mora without using the word Lovecraftian.?” Obviously a touch point that we can't go to inside Tamriel.

I think it's one of the things that really draws people to The Elder Scrolls. There's a lot of iconic fantasy elements to it: Dragons and Elves and Dwarves and Orcs. But Tamriel is such a specific place. Like, these are not the Dark Elves that you see in every franchise. Dungeons and Dragons Dark Elves are fun and interesting in their own way, but Tamriel Dark Elves have a whole lot I can lay out on the table. Like this giant package of stuff. When we do have a touch point, something with a lot of real world connections, we try to focus on what's the special Tamriel side of that.

Why is that? Well, it’s worth noting, since we’re using Lovecraft as an example: Lovecraft is a very problematic person. But he’s also an author that wrote with a very specific style. His word usage is very unique. And it’s great to be able to take inspiration from the greater Mythos, but focus on our own ideas, focus on our own content, and infuse those things with what makes the Mythos exciting.

We also have strict standards in terms of pop culture references and modern language. We really try to make sure that the world inside Tamriel is very focused on Tamriel. For me, I see that as a way to just expand the IP itself. There's nothing wrong with other IPs, I'm a big consumer of media just like everybody else.

But as developers of this product I think it's incumbent on us to really focus on what makes Tamriel and the Elder Scrolls special. Make that front and center. Rather than going for references, even if they’re fun. Even if it's a thing that makes us laugh, reaching for that pop culture reference just in some way dilutes the IP. And that's how we approach it.

 Have you ever had a ridiculous idea that was brought to you that you had to say no to?

There are no ridiculous ideas. Anytime I've ever talked to another professional developer in the game space, the passion and the excitement that they bring is incredible. Sometimes my initial reaction is like: “Okay I have to be very calm. I have to be very chill.” Sometimes that happens, right?

But it's never a hard “no get out of here.” I have never had that reaction. Because if there's ever a time when a person comes to me with an idea that I don't think is gonna sit well within the IP, that's usually about execution. So I say “Let’s talk about what your goals are. Let's key in on why this is exciting to you. What is it about this concept that has you so revved up and engaged to do that?” Because 9 times out of 10 what I find is what we can do is we can divest the stuff they're excited about from the stuff that's not going to sit well with the IP. We can keep that excitement and energy alive. Just frame it in a way that works within this enormous franchise, there's almost nothing that we can't do.

That last time, I have to say: “Hey, this probably isn't going to work.” But even then, I’m always quick to say “But what if we did this? Or what if we did that?” It's really just taking shots to try to find an alternative that still works in the IP.

I think maybe you hear the title “Loremaster” and you think I have an exhaustive knowledge of the IP. I’ve read a lot, to be sure. I’ve engaged with the IP a lot. But I don’t know everything. What I do have in my tool box is a lot of knowledge of the setting and a lot of experience in solving narrative problems.

So even if they're coming at me with an idea that maybe doesn't sit well. I can be like: “Hey, did you consider this?” And they might say to me, ”I didn't even know that existed!” I just see those moments as opportunities. I’m all about “yes, and”, you know? Hard “nos” are a waste of that opportunity.

Has there ever been any concepts or anything that you're really proud of your team for being able to accomplish?

All of them? Sorry, that's a very silly answer. I've only been back on the development team since High Isle. So I have a bias for the more recent stuff we've done. I was a little nervous when we started talking about doing druids because it's such a specific thing. And people obviously have a lot of strong feelings both ways. And I'm really glad that we took on such a hot button topic. I think it's awesome when the team is unafraid to charge into a lore concept that has a lot of idiosyncrasies and a lot of vagaries right. 

In the ESO developer deep dive on lore books it was mentioned that ideas for books are put into a document for writers to pick through. Is there ever a time when books don't get made that you wish could have been?

All of us, when we walk into a new release, have such big eyes, right? We want to do everything. I hope the one thing I’ve conveyed through this conversation is much we as developers love this IP and this world. As much as everybody that plays. When we walk into a release everybody wants to cover everything, talk about every permutation. And then the reality sets in, and we have to pick our battles. There's only so many hours in the day. 

So yes, eventually there's probably going to be books that we don't get to. When we start the zone process Bill Slavicsek, our lead writer, some of the senior writers, and I come up with a big list of books that seem relevant for the release. We actually end up writing even more than that list, when you consider all the quest books. All the books written for a specific purpose. Or the systems involved with that release.

The nice thing, though, is that ideas like that are kind of evergreen. So, you know, maybe we don't hit a specific book in the release. But there's no reason down the line that we couldn't pick up that idea and dust it off. Or recontextualize it in some other way down the line.

So have you ever considered writing any books that are mentioned only in the lore, but haven't actually been released? There's some books that I want to get my hands on, but they're not written yet.

I almost think, in some ways, if you got the whole text of some of these books it would be kind of underwhelming. I’m sure a lot of us have some of these books in our head, and they’re always going to be more interesting that way than seeing the whole thing written out. That's not to say never. Sometimes, there's big name books that are referenced out there as like, because it'd be a slam dunk. But that’s a thing we pick and choose carefully.

A kinda fun example, in Isobel’s questline she name checks all these romance novels. I promise you that any romance novel that I wrote for the game would be much less interesting than any romance novel you're telling yourself in your head based on those titles.

As an aside, Izzy’s voice actress Laura Bailey was the one to choose which of those ended up in the game. That was a lot of fun, we have her a big long list and she was like “this, this, and this.” It was awesome. 

 Have you ever been involved with any of the lore of any of the spin offs of that have come out? Example being Fallout Shelter Online which had a crossover with TES: Blades?

I'm very specifically the Loremaster for Elder Scrolls Online, with ZeniMax Online Studios. I do sometimes talk to other groups within Bethesda, but it’s more typically “Hey here’s a marketing initiative for ESO that's related to another region.” And then we chat about something specific.

One thing I can talk about that’s out in the world is Chip Theory's really cool board game the Betrayal of the Second Era. I've been talking with those guys on a weekly basis about the project they're doing.

In aggregate, that's kind of a small part of my job duties. I'm very focused on ESO and what we're doing next.

I'm definitely looking forward to more information about it! Do you have a favorite piece of Elder Scrolls Lore?

Making me choose my favorite kids! I think what the Elder Scrolls IP really excels at is forming the bones of a fictional world using real world history and historical trends. The cyclical nature of culture, and how it influences what happens down the line. Because the games sort of jump around in time the way they do, you get a living historian perspective of all these different cultures.  

I'm a huge Aldmeri Dominion fan in ESO. You can see in the AD of our timeline the nuggets, the cultural elements, that end up becoming really toxic and terrible and gross by the time of Skyrim. The Aldmeri Dominion that you encounter as primarily an enemy group in Skyrim is this beautiful, complicated and empathetic culture in the Second Era. That’s a thing that I love about Elder Scrolls lore. We as players are like historians that get to time travel, and I just think that's so cool. 

I'll do a shout out, not that he needs it, but Dan Carlin's Hardcore History is incredibly influential for how I think about these cultural and historic elements. The way that he approaches history is so engaging and exciting. It feels very similar approach to how we approach the fake history of Tamriel. It's not just a series of events, it’s specific people and junction points knitted together into a whole. That's my favorite part.

I would have thought that it would have been the Maomer honestly.

That’s right, when I took on the Loremaster role I got called out on an AMA from many, many years ago, how I'd love to see Pyandonea be an adventure zone. I think Pyandonea is awesome. The Maomer are one of the things I loved about Galen, we got to show a different side of that culture and expand that out. And Captain Siravaen is incredible. What a fantastic character, holy heck.

All right, to further divide you among your children. Which faction do you find yourself most aligned with?

Not hard at all! My heart bleeds yellow 100%. I was the writer for Auridon and Reaper's March. I was the original writer for Razum-dar and I think I was the first writer for Queen Ayrenn. Getting to work on that set of zones in particular was one of my high points working on the project the first time around.

All the writers, when we were shipping the game, talked to each other quite a bit. By the time we got to the AD zones myself, Zach Bush, Rebecca Harwick, and Tracy Seamster all had developed a great rapport. The narrative arc that flows through from Khenarthi’s Roost to Reapers March was freaking incredible. Entirely a function of how great our communication was as the development process went on. It was such a joy to be able to see little ideas that we'd set up in earlier zones pay off down the line.

So going back into the faction alignment. Have you ever found that there has been any interoffice politics through the different factions that you align with?

I mean, we tease each other a bit. When Rich Lambert and I were talking about me speaking to you, I mentioned I would be talking about my AD pride. I believe his exact response was "Ugh Bananas". Everybody has their favorites and I think that's wonderful.

That's great. I will like to say that I am ad through and through. I've never played another faction. An Imperial with AD.

Oh, nice!

Do you utilize the UESP or the Imperial library or do you have your own internal wiki that you utilize.

We use a wide array of sources, whenever we’re looking into a lore element. We have a ton of internal resources, as you might imagine, and we consider everything from Twitter threads to reddit, to UESP, to you guys at Imperial Library. I would say that if folks are talking about Elder Scrolls Online, on some level we're listening.

A lot of the times the conversations that folks are having about the IP and about the game are driven from things that excite them and make them really happy, or make them really unhappy. It’s our job as creative professionals to try to filter that feedback. Just like I was talking about earlier: “What are our goals?” We triangulate what gets said, and it helps us figure out what engages us with any given piece of lore, or story, or character?

 Have there been any fan theories that have made you think differently on or change how you view the Lore.

From our perspective the more speculation, the more conversation, the better. If there's a lot of conversation around a particular element, for us, that's a good indicator that we're onto something. I was pretty sure, even before the Necrom announcement, that people would be excited about the specific combination of the Telvanni Peninsula and Apocrypha.

The level of enthusiasm that people have expressed has … I wouldn't say it’s surprised me, but it's made me feel really good. It's not so much about any specific element or theory. It’s about looking at the conversation in the community, to understand if we’re on the right track.

Do you have any thoughts on the supposed map inconsistencies?

I am super excited to talk about this. My viewpoint is that maps, whether they're for the Elder Scrolls Online, or for Oblivion, or for some other product … those maps have a function. They are built with a specific audience in mind. In our case that's true on two levels. First and foremost, they’re for players to be able to understand geographically the place they’re in. But if you hit the M key on a PC in ESO, all of those maps are also “in game maps,” diegetic maps that are hanging on the walls. And in-world maps are just as subject to errors, and frankly, bias as text is. 

The real world example I can point to is the Mercator projection. The projection of the world that everybody grew up looking at in school looking is wildly inaccurate. Greenland is not that big. 

If people are looking at maps as a source of capital T truth, with our IP, there is no such thing. Everything is subjected to that unreliable narrator. Just like with a book or a note or a scroll. Especially so when you look at how things drift over time. The difference in time between the Second Era in and the earlier games in the franchise that are later in the timeline. Information is lost, or misinterpreted in the intervening years.

In many ways, you're right to where if you look back at maps from the 1500s, or even when they first mapped California, you'll see that it's wildly inaccurate; you see almost an island of California instead of what it actually is. But I was wondering does that leave open the possibility for you to change the map? In the future?

Let me be clear, I would say that’s never the goal. If you look back at when we first shipped the game, there was a lot of conversation about how the geography of Tamriel was expressed in Elder Scrolls Online. Versus how it appeared in Skyrim, or how it appeared in Redguard. 

There's never a goal to change things just to make them different. The realities of game development sometimes necessitate changes so that we can accommodate gameplay needs or narrative needs. And if you’re thinking about a single player sprawling RPG like Skyrim versus an MMO like ESO, the maps have to be different to accommodate that as well. But I think those changes are all in service of making a compelling experience and making a good product. 

What I think is that some of the fandom I think feels neglected because it's not the Tamriel that they are expecting. It's not always the same view that you're looking at Tamriel. I think people understand that there's inconsistencies and they want an explanation for those inconsistencies.

That’s a great way to approach this. It's the things we've just been talking about, your California map example is perfect. Back in the 1300's there were maps with "here there be dragons", right? Especially when you're in a medieval society. Tamriel is pretty good in terms of like, academic rigor but there's no GPS. By definition the maps in Tamriel that are of Tamriel are going to have inconsistencies. 

In regards to “playing in any order.” It's been stated that the stories of ESO can happen in any order, such as the marketing term "play how you want". How do you reconcile that with the multi year story arc being planned?

Similar to what we talked about before, we’re looking at what we’ve been doing for the last couple releases, look at the learnings that we've made. As Rich Lambert talked about at the announcement, we're looking to take some new approaches to things. As the product ages, the framework that we've been using has been super successful. But in a mature product like ESO it’s critical to make sure that folks stay engaged. Quite frankly not just people playing the game, but us too, right? I work with a bunch of developers, incredible human beings, that I have known for over a decade because I worked with them 10 years ago when the game first shipped. And they're still working on the product, making Elder Scrolls Online.

Ultimately I think one of the things that really defines ESO as a product is to do whatever you want to do. You want to go live in the launch elven lands, do all of that content and roleplay there? Go to town! If you want to have new Skyrim adventures, we’ve got lots of content for you there too. 

But we want to make sure we're at our creative best. We want to make sure that we're delivering a product that's still exciting. And so that's why going forward we're taking this opportunity to kind of self examine. See what things we might do differently to make sure that excitement and engagement continues to be really, really high.

Do you feel that holds you back any? Such as when a recurring character shows up? Since we know that nothing major can really happen to that character. They can experience things, but you couldn't really kill the character off completely for example.

The direct way to answer this question is: constraints breed creativity. It’s a bit of a fallacy, I think, that the best opportunity for creativity is a clear blue sky. No obstacles in your way, no constraints. The reality is that having to do things a certain way, or having to respect certain decisions, really helps in terms of focus . I said it near the beginning of our conversation: What's actually important? What are the things that really matter in terms of making something fun and exciting? 

That's part of the decision making and analysis we're doing right now. “Hey what are the constraints that are helpful and creative? And what can we do to make sure that we're setting ourselves up for success going forward?”

We've finally reached our last question. I have been waiting over 20 years to ask someone and I'm not even sure if you have an answer for me. Is there anything you can tell me about the artifact of The Eye of Agonia during the time period of ESO?

I was excited to see this, because I kind of want to turn that around on you actually. Why is this artifact in particular so interesting and engaging for you? 

The Eye of Argonia is an artifact that a lot of people at the very end of the Second Era were looking for. The only thing that we know about it is that it's the King's jewel of Black Marsh and it's supposedly also a key to a city. We have very little information about the duskfall Argonian society. What secrets do the Argonians not want to have released about the duskfall time? And how does that artifact tie into that?

So it probably won't surprise you to know that I unfortunately don't have a lot more context for you. But I am super engaged with this idea that the Argonians in particular, this aspect of their culture has grabbed you so much. Can you expand on that?

This was one of the first references that we got see where it was clear Argonians didn't really want to speak about. They held secrets about it. And it’s a secret that they didn't seem to want to let out. The culture we see in Black Marsh is not the same one that duskfall was, which was a completely different civilization, they had different values, different ways of seeing the world. For them to have knowledge of that timeframe, and don't want to release any knowledge about it. That they hide it is something that I find intriguing because it's something that seems like they fear in a way.

That's awesome, man. I think you're touching on what I was talking about earlier, about what I really find engaging about Tamriel lore. In a lot of other fantasy contexts cultures end up being a little one note. It’s one of the things that still has me to this day very excited to work on an Elder Scrolls game. It's that character theme again. There's a group of people within Argonian culture that have such strong opinions about this element that it ends up with this very strange and mysterious aura around it.

There's so many of these little hook points into every culture’s soul that makes them have strong contexts and feelings. Are Dark Elves these complex interesting, three-dimensional religious people with this very specific spiritual structure? Or are they soulless slavers? Both of those things are true at various points in their history.

It's the old Obi Wan thing, “from a certain point of view.” It allows the Elder Scrolls franchise to have stuff like the Eye of Argonia. This universe contains multitudes and that's so exciting for me. And it just provides so many great opportunities for storytelling, compelling characters, and fun, new experiences.

 And it can keep me intrigued for years, as you see Redguard was released 25 years ago this year and I've still been eager to ask somebody about it.

I have tremendous respect for anybody who gets passionate about something in Tamriel, the cultures of Tamriel. We work really hard on this game.

There's a lot of passion in the community. And I think that you're doing very great work with it. And I look forward to seeing where you go from here.

Thanks, man. I cannot wait to see what people think of Necrom, and the Telvanni Peninsula, and Apocrypha. It's gonna be wonderful!