Summer Game Fest usually brings with it dozens of game previews all within a few short days. SGF 2026 also brought me a few interesting interviews about the future of games, and one of those was surrounding The Elder Scrolls Online from Zenimax Studios—sadly, no news about The Elder Scrolls VI yet, though.
ESO is getting a huge overhaul, completely changing the game as long-time players know it, all in the hopes of evolving and standing a chance at becoming a 30-year MMO. Moving away from their current chapter system, The Elder Scrolls Online is moving to a seasonal system. I’ll be honest, whenever I think of seasons, I think of games like Fortnite, begging me to buy a battle pass. After talking to ESO Game Director Nick Giacomini and Associate Design Director Jason Barnes, much like when I spoke to Nick at gamescom 2025, I have to say, it sounds like The Elder Scrolls Online is in good hands.
We talked about the loss of ESO chapters, Season One, the Thieves Guild, Sheogorath, a plethora of updates and the future of The Elder Scrolls Online, and I walked away wanting to head back to Tamriel as soon as possible.
This interview took place at Summer Game Fest Play Days on June 6, 2026, so some features have already been implemented in the game, but ESO Season One officially starts on July 8, 2026.
For our audience, can you tell us who you are and what you do on The Elder Scrolls Online?
Nick Giacomini: I’m Nick Giacomini, the Game Director for The Elder Scrolls Online, and what do I do? That really depends on the day, but I’m responsible for the vision of The Elder Scrolls Online. The what and the why. I would say that characterizes it pretty well.
Jason Barnes: And I’m Jason Barnes, the Associate Design Director. I’m mostly in charge of the content, the quests and the narrative team on ESO.
That sounds like all the teams on ESO.
Jason Barnes: Yeah, I mean, if you play it for the story content or the class, then yeah.
So give readers the rundown. Why are we here talking about The Elder Scrolls Online at Summer Game Fest? What’s happening with ESO?
Nick Giacomini: I mean, where to begin? Right now we’re here because…the last time we talked, we were talking about how things were going to change, and things have changed a lot recently. We switched to a seasonal model. Season Zero kicked off just a few months back, and we are very soon approaching Season One and the next update. So coming up, we have a lot of exciting things coming for players.
We have challenge difficulty—that’s Overland difficulty—so an optional difficulty system for players to get into. We have the werewolf revamp, so a mechanical and a visual update. Pretty excited about that one. We have Veterancy, a PvP progression system that is seasonal. Veterancy is a PvP progression system. It’s got a lot of rewards, cosmetics, titles, things like that. The players can engage in the resets at about a six-month cadence, which is what we’re thinking.
And Vengeance is going to become a permanent mode, and that’s all coming next week, in addition to some player experience improvements, and why don’t you take season one?
Jason Barnes: Yeah, for season one, the return of the Thieves Guild is really the big headliner. In addition to that, we’re also doing a new Sheogorath storyline that’s just kind of a fun, zany adventure. So, those are the two more traditional ESO content-related things we’re doing, but we’re also bringing in a bunch of new features and new types of content as well.
In addition to those, we also have a new system called the Favour system, which is, I keep telling people, it’s kind of like dynamic quests in Skyrim, where you go, and a character gives you a quest that you can pick up every day, but there’s a story attached to it.
So each character—there’s one character per alliance for the initial launch—and they all have their unique story, and if you go back every day and do it, they send you a letter in the mail that continues that story, and you can do it over and over up to a certain point, and then they’ll send you this cool reward, which is like a portrait of themselves that you can hang up in your house.
Is that a new take on doing dailies in ESO?
Jason Barnes: It’s kind of a new take on dailies, and one of the cool things about it that we’re doing with this is…it’s a bunch of different things—let’s say it could be fishing, it could be go kill a world boss, but one of the other things that we’re doing is we’re sending players to old quests that are always missed.
So we have actually a bunch of hidden quests that normal players have never found in the 12 years, so we’re like, “Hey, you should go do this,” and kind of pointing them in those directions, but if you were one of the players that did complete that, you get just a freebie for the day, they’re like, “Hey, you’ve already done this, awesome. Here are some rewards!” So that’s kind of incorporated into the system as well.
And then the new rumour system—which is something I’m really excited about. It is more of a—I keep calling it a narrative scavenger hunt—so find a body in the woods, and there’s a note next to it; usually, you pick it up, you get a quest, and you follow it from there, but the rumour system, it’s all the player has to figure it out. It’s a mystery.
So you get the note; it’ll pop up. There’s a new part of the UI that holds rumours in it, and once you get it, you essentially have to figure out the puzzle and then solve it yourself. So, it may be a guard who died, but he has a note that’s talking about his boss, who was suspicious, and the last time they met at this location, and you have to decipher what that location is, and go to it, and then you find more clues, and kind of have to put it together.
With that system, are there map markers and things like that for it in ESO Season One?
Jason Barnes: No, you have to figure it out yourself.
So we are going old-school with this Elder Scrolls Online update. You need an ESO notepad now.
Jason Barnes: The one thing that will help out is in the new UI element; it does track every clue you pick up. Yeah, so you can reference it at any time by just clicking on it. It’ll pop up the note or give you the tooltip, and it doesn’t tell you exactly where to go. It’s not like “Go to this city at this door.” Some of them are more complicated than others, but a lot of times you have to figure it out on your own. And then it’s putting all the clues together and figuring out how you want to solve it, because I think every single one of them has multiple endings.
That is something that’s just kind of placed all around the world in the base game area that you can just find. In addition to that, we also have dynamic encounters, which are these new events that spin up in the zone as you’re running around, so you may be going to buy a farm and it gets attacked suddenly by a bunch of bandits, has multiple phases, and people can come in and join at any time. There’s also another one that’s where a vampire shows up and just starts causing chaos, and you have to figure out how to track them down.
This is the beginning of that system, and we’re trying to just see how it feels and do more with it. We’re going to continue to expand on that system in the future, and then last but not least—because there’s a lot—we have something called the Sage’s Vault, and that is an experimental, kind of, area you go into that has multiple wings, and those wings will randomize the rooms that you go into, and each has a unique challenge to it.
So one might be a light combat room where it’s filling with poison, and you have to defeat everything in a timely manner. One might be a stealth puzzle, where you go in, and there are these shadow Khajiits singing in various corners, and you have to sneak through, and every time you go over something like a puddle, it makes a sound, and they’ll shift around. Then we even have a giant mushroom room where you have to do a jumping puzzle, and fireballs are shooting at you.
And what are the benefits of the Sage’s Vaults in The Elder Scrolls Online?
Jason Barnes: There are two layers to the vaults, essentially. There’s the initial “I’m just running through it,” so every time you complete a room, you get a chest with a bunch of good stuff in it. Then it’s gonna have tons of stuff—we’re finalizing the details—but it’ll have lots of goodies to make it worth it. In addition to just running the rooms normally, you’ll also randomly come across what’s called a jackpot room.
You have a low chance of getting this room, and essentially, you walk in, and it is just treasure chests everywhere, and you can just go loot them all. Or tons of resource nodes that are rare, that you just get a ton of them. So that’s for just going through it initially and wanting to do it over and over; that’s the draw there, but underneath it all, there’s this layer of every room has a secret to it.
You have to figure out what that secret is and how it connects to a specific other room, and then see how they all connect together. They’re not obvious; there are clues throughout the vault that give hints and stuff like that, but eventually, if you put them all together and solve the big puzzle of the Sage’s Vault, you unlock a unique Griffin mount. It’s a unique draw to that,
So yeah, just a little bit of stuff coming.
Nick Giacomini: And that’s just Season One. We have solo dungeons coming in Season Two—oh, even in Season One, we have High Seas of Tamriel, a new event with naval battles.
Jason Barnes: A new trial!
Nick Giacomini: A new trial with new mechanics in it.
Just to touch back on the Sage’s Vaults in ESO before we move on, can you literally just keep going in over and over, or is there a limit?
Nick Giacomini: It’s gated by these Nowhere Keys that you find throughout the content, basically. So, there are different ways to get Nowhere Keys, and Nowhere Keys allow you to go deeper into the Sage as well, basically. You want to collect the keys, and collecting the keys lets you access this area.
Jason Barnes: The nice thing is, if you do go in as a group, it only consumes one key per group, so if you go in with a bunch of keys, you can maybe run the whole thing. But you’re probably not—no one’s gonna be able to do everything and figure out all the puzzles the first time. There’s a sequence and stuff like that that you have to do certain things in.
And there isn’t a finite amount of these Nowhere Keys in ESO?
Jason Barnes: You can have as many as you want. You can sometimes, even in the vault itself, get a Nowhere Key from one of the chests, so you can keep progressing.
Seasons in games can mean a lot of things, especially in a lot of different genres. Fortnite, there is a little story, but you’re unlocking a bar of cosmetics, and that’s your season. What is a season in the world of The Elder Scrolls Online?
Nick Giacomini: ESO had the chapter model for a long time, almost 10 years, right? Something close to that. And the chapter model was very well understood. Like, it was the chapter zone that had a trial with it; there were some dungeons throughout the year, etc. Then, usually, some kind of new feature, like a new class or something. So, relatively well understood.
Seasons are…it’s a pretty significant break from that. And you asked what a season is? The idea is that a season can be anything, right? So, a season, like Season Zero, is a good example, the one that we kicked off, had 20-plus player experience improvements, right? Things that players have been complaining about sometimes for years, that we fixed—we listened.
It had the rework of the Dragon Knight, so a mechanical and visual update to reduce floatiness, make it feel just really modern and really, really satisfying, and it had a brand new type of zone called an Event zone with the Night Market. That’s an example of one season; the next season, this one is very different stuff
So a season in ESO is just a promise that you’re going to do some cool stuff, and you can change it up each time.
Nick Giacomini: Yes! It does have—it’s about three months in length, and there is the Tamriel Tome, which is kind of a wrapper; that’s our take on a battle pass that starts from beginning to end, but aside from that, it can be a lot.
How does that change the development of ESO for Zenimax? Painfully, I bet. But rather than going from expansions or chapters to these three-month periods…You have to make good on your word every three months? How does that feel on your team?
Nick Giacomini: It’s a mixed bag. On the one hand, it’s really exciting because we are doing a lot of things that I think the team has wanted to do, if not in the specifics, at least in the “Wouldn’t it be cool if we…” A clean break away from chapters has unlocked a lot of excitement, a lot of innovation, a lot of creativity, and it’s not that it wasn’t there before, but it made it in a much more significant way.
On the other hand, it is challenging to come up with these new systems, to try to come up with new, different, engaging ways to excite our players. So yeah, it’s definitely hard, but at the same time, it’s worth it; it’s needed. I think Elder Scrolls Online, our players, for a long time, and we felt so too; it has become a little too predictable. The little players had characterized it as formulaic, and we agreed, and so being able to break free from that is liberating and exciting, but absolutely, it’s not easy.
I know you can’t tell me the details, but how far into The Elder Scrolls Online seasons is Zenimax planning? I know you mentioned ESO Season Two. Do you have a long-term roadmap for ESO already?
Nick Giacomini: So, yes and no, and that’s not a cop-out answer. We do have, like literally, a three-year roadmap of “Here’s what we’re trying to do,” but it is meant to be flexible, fluid, etc., because part of our approach right now is—I mean, that was part of the trap that we fell into with chapters.
What we were creating was fairly well understood, and required such a significant lead time in order to produce it, and that was very limiting in terms of innovation, in terms of taking player feedback, in terms of adjusting, etc. So, yes, we do, but that roadmap is meant to be living, breathing, and changing by design.
And is the ESO community going to be a big factor in what changes from season to season in ESO?
Nick Giacomini: Oh, absolutely, absolutely! And it’s already changed based on—I think Class Mastery is a great example. So, that’s coming out very soon. Where we started this rework of our classes, right? And we were…this is a multi-year effort, because this is not just like, “Oh, let’s change a few numbers here.”
We are changing the visuals, we are changing the feel, we are changing the mechanics, we are changing the balance. We’re changing everything one class at a time, and it’s A, to make it more modern, but B, with the introduction of subclassing, that resulted in a lot of players feeling compelled to—certain builds were just very powerful, overpowered, and so they felt pigeonholed into certain builds.
So when we announced this new initiative, we were expecting a lot of excitement, and there was some, but at the same time, players said, like, “Hey, you’re telling me we have to wait for years for you to fix this issue,” and it’s like, “You’re right, you shouldn’t have to wait for that long to fix this issue.” So, what we did is the team came back together. We came up with the Class Mastery system, which is a new system.
It’s actually really interesting. It’s not just a band-aid; it’s a fun new system where you can spend two points out of five choices if you do pure class—If you don’t subclass, basically—that makes your player or your character more powerful, and it is significantly reducing the gap between subclassing and pureclassing. It’s making pureclassing viable again, but that’s an example where that was not on our roadmap even just a few months ago.
Some gamers might be a little skeptical of a seasonal system. What do you want to tell The Elder Scrolls Online players to let them know that ESO seasons are going to be okay?
Nick Giacomini: I think seasons can have a lot of baggage, and it can mean a lot of different things. For us, there are a few things. First, it’s coming with a lot of positivity. As I said, we’re able to finally address a lot of these foundational things. That is a very big focus for us.
We’ve talked about us being like a 30-year game, right? Which sounds nice, but when you actually think about “Okay, well, what would it take to be a 30-year game?” That means modernizing and not just adding new zones. It’s not that we aren’t going to add new zones; we absolutely are going to add new zones, but it allows us the seasonal system to be able to address these foundational things, like combat, like classes, like these pain points that we’ve been addressing, like challenge difficulty, like solo dungeons.
All of these things, when you look at this year, would not have been possible in the previous model, simply because too many people were focused on developing what chapters were.
The Elder Scrolls Online is evolving!
Nick Giacomini: We are evolving, exactly. All new content and features are free now going forward.
Oh, thank God, I am missing so many packs because I had stopped playing ESO when my kids were little.
Jason Barnes: You should come back!
Nick Giacomini: You should play again! It’s a great time. But yeah, everything is free; all new content and features are free going forward. So, again, the chapters were working against us; we were dividing the player base, we’re creating this friction, and that was a loud and clear message from the players.
And you’re an ESO player as well. Is that a message from you, too? Did you feel that?
Nick Giacomini: Yeah, absolutely. For me, for Jason, I remember we talked about this a lot when we started working together. There were things that we had agreed on for a long time, which the chapter system again made extremely difficult to do. So, as a player, a lot of what we’re doing is something that resonates with me, but it doesn’t have to, right? That’s not the point of this.
This isn’t my game, this isn’t Jason’s game, it’s our game. It’s the player’s game as much as it is ours, and so we’re on a path right now to co-develop the game with the community, because this is their home, as it is our home; they should have a say in how it’s built.
Great! Now, if I read correctly, the first time we’ve gone back to the Thieves Guild in a decade, right?
Jason Barnes: 2015 or 16, yeah, it’s been a while.
The Thieves Guild is a very popular part of not just The Elder Scrolls franchise or ESO, but any game that’s kind of in that style. There’s always something like it. I’m curious what Zenimax is doing to keep the Thieves Guild that we know, and if the Thieves Guild has evolved in the last decade.
Jason Barnes: So there are a couple of things that we’re doing with it, just to try to make it exciting and relevant. One is that it’s a continuation of the story in a way, so if you have played the original Thieves Guild when we launched it, there are some ties that will continue over. Not the whole thing, because it’s a brand new guild. They’re in Glenumbra, they’re forming up in Daggerfall, and one of the original members, Quen from the original storyline, has come over to help them, and of course, draws the player in to get it all going.
But there are a lot of nice ties for the players who have played the original; there are some payoffs and things like that from the original story that will play out. But if you haven’t, you can also—all of our stuff, you can play it in any order. We’ve started to do a thing now that we’re moving the timelines forward in the storyline; like if you go to pick it up, you’ll actually get a pop-up that says, “Hey, you haven’t done the original Thieves Guild. If you want to go do it, go and do that first, and then come back over here.”
You don’t have to play the original ESO Thieves Guild first, though, right?
Jason Barnes: No, you don’t have to. I think the only thing you’ll get, it doesn’t change the story, but it’ll change some of the perspectives of the characters and stuff like that. Like, if you’ve done the original, then Quen knows you already, and there are some ties there, and there are some conversations and stuff that would be available to you that wouldn’t normally be there.
Nick Giacomini: One quick interjection: The Thieves Guild, now, by the way, that used to be a paid DLC; it’s free, so anyone can do it.
Jason Barnes: But the other thing, too, is we did look at some of the stuff like how do we make stuff like the stealth system, the gameplay system, a little bit more interesting. So we did a couple of small tweaks there. We introduced this new item called Somnal Powder, which is something you get that you can basically throw at NPCs, and it’ll distract them as you’re sneaking around, so that’s a new addition that we didn’t have before.
We’ve also added more interactable things in the world. Before, you had these baskets you could hide in. Now, there are potted plants, like big ones that you can jump into; you can hide behind curtains. And then the actual gameplay, because the Thieves Guild is very stealth-heavy, it’s not go in and kill everything. A lot of the quests will have payoffs if you are successful in sneaking around, and the quest line will actually branch in different ways based on how well you actually do in some of these.
We kind of took a just a step back and said, “What can we add to the stealth system in general to just make it more fun and part of the world,” but also having the story payoffs and stuff like that.
And why the choice to go back to the Thieves Guild in ESO now? Why is now the right time?
Jason Barnes: When we did the seasonal shifts, we knew early on we were going to revisit a zone like Glenumbra. One of the things we did was update a bunch of the art assets in Glenumbra as well, but I think we’re looking at, “Hey, what would make sense here?” The Thieves Guild has always been really popular; it’s been something that we really enjoy. I was one of the original designers on the actual questline itself, and so I was like, “Okay, there’s a lot of just ties and things.”
What does it feel like to come back to the Thieves Guild as one of the original designers?
Jason Barnes: It’s weird. Good, weird. I’m in a different position now, so going from making it, like the meat and potatoes of it, versus helping the team out and helping direct it is a very different feeling.
Does the team ever look back at anything in The Elder Scrolls Online and say, “Why did we do that?” Or “Wow, we did that!”
Jason Barnes: All the time, all the time. We have thousands of hours of content, and looking back and playing through, especially the base game stuff, sometimes you’ll be like, “Hmm, I would have done that differently,” or “That’s really clever,” right? So yeah, we always have that. But yeah, I think Thieves Guild, it felt like a good kind of…it was a good callback. It was a good time to do it without having to explain a bunch of new stuff, too.
Nick Giacomini: I think that’s well said. The only thing I’d add is that what we’re trying to do right now, we’ve talked about how we’re trying to achieve evolution. We’re trying to achieve evolution, not revolution. And so I think Season One is a good encapsulation of that, where it’s Thieves Guild, it’s very iconic, it’s very recognizable.
This is Elder Scrolls Online, 100%, but we’re changing in very meaningful ways, like with the adjustments that Jason just talked about, like with rumours, like with favours, like with Sage’s Vaults, like with challenge difficulty, and all these different things. So it made sense to choose something that is very nostalgic, recognizable, but a twist on it. Do it differently.
We are running out of time, but I need the Cole’s Notes details on Sheogorath coming to ESO Season One. What’s going on?
Jason Barnes: Sheogorath comes back to take a vacation as a mortal. Basically, he sets his power aside so he can experience things like cheese festivals and touring the world, and all that that entails as a mortal, and it quickly goes sideways, as you would expect. It’s just six quests of chaos.
Actually, we’re doing something new, where we have a new type of quest that we’re calling Tales of Tamriel, and it’s a questline that’s going to bring you all throughout the world, so you’ll be visiting multiple zones and doing different things, so it’s not just locked into one area. It is crazy; it’s wild, and it’s just everything goes off the rails very quickly and stays that way.
It’s just a low-stakes, fun thing that the team wanted to do, and that’s just kind of pointing back to the seasons model, right? Like, “Hey, let’s tell a story that’s low stakes, that’s with a fan favourite character that we can do some fun, zany hijinks with.” And so that was something that the designers and the writing team and the art team put together, and it turned out really great.
I’m assuming Sheogorath is just as crazy as a mortal, right?
Jason Barnes: Oh, yeah. He regrets his decisions, but not for all those same reasons you would think. It’s craziness, and his power has also just taken its own kind of form and flown off, and is also causing chaos as well.
Alright, Nick, we have spoken before, and the more you get stuck with me in interviews, the more you will get this question from me. I want to know your one favourite thing coming up in The Elder Scrolls Online. Of all that stuff you just listed for ESO, what are you both most looking forward to, whether it’s for you or the players?
Nick Giacomini: It’s tough to choose a single one. My favourite—can I pick an initiative—is the class overhaul that we’re doing, like the redesign, and it’s my favourite for a few reasons. One, it’s really run. The Dragon Knight just feels completely different, and it has been fun for me personally. It is fun to see how players have responded so positively to it. I personally can’t wait for the Sorc [Sorcerer] to be taken on, not that I have a bias toward it, but I made a Sorc, so yeah, I’m really looking forward to that one.
And in addition to that, in addition to how well it’s been received, it’s, again, when we talk about us again, like being a 30-year MMO, it’s about addressing foundation, right? And this is so foundational, this is core, and this is us proving our commitment to not just adding a new zone, not just chasing the next big thing, but addressing core elements to the game to make it so that we are still The Elder Scrolls Online, but modern, meeting players where they are.
I think I’m really excited about it, and our commitment to this journey to become a 30-year game.
Jason Barnes: I think mine, I’ll keep it quick, is the challenge difficulty that we have coming up. It’s funny because it’s not something my team specifically worked on, but it integrates into everything we do. So seeing players—who the content was too easy for—doing quests, they’re like, “Oh, I’m one-shotting bosses and stuff,” and now going back and they’re playing through it, and they’re getting killed in two shots, because they cranked it up and aren’t paying attention now.
They are now paying the price.
Jason Barnes: Yeah, the feedback is, like, “We’re more engaged now. We’re actually paying attention to the combat. The stories feel more epic now because we feel like we have to actually pay attention to everything, and there are bosses we didn’t even know they had these abilities, because we were killing them so quickly,” and things like that.
Is that intended just to make ESO more difficult, or can you also go the other way and make it easier?
Jason Barnes: Just more, yeah. It has the baseline, but maybe in the future, that is something we can look at. That was one of the most requested features: just make things more difficult, and so we gave players a slider.
That is all our time, but thank you both so much.
The Elder Scrolls Online Season One officially launches on July 8, 2026, for PC/Mac, PlayStation and XBOX.
