Zenimax hosted a press event last week disclosing a hefty amount of information about some of TESO's features that we have been dying to hear about. Just to give you a little taster, amongst this wealth of information, they talked about the UI, combat, stealth, crafting and questing.  But enough of the small talk, let's get right into it shall we.

Minimalistic UI

The first topic on the agenda will be about the UI. Although Zenimax left the news about this to the very end of the press event, we like to do this backwards here at Pixel Judge, so yeah.

Basically, Zenimax have decided to stick with the old guard with 'first person mode' even after clearly stating that they would not be implementing it. At least to the point where you would not be able to see your weapons and hands while in this mode. It is not available for use in the current beta build, but I'm sure that bit of news will put a smile on any Elder Scrolls veteran.

The UI almost feels stripped down to some extent. Which in my opinion, is awesome. It fits in with the Elder Scrolls series - They have always had a very minimal UI's. It's always been about the world that you're in, and being able to view absolutely all of it, without your screen being bogged down by large icons and messy bars, which is something many peoplecannot stand. Yes, I'm looking at you WoW. This flows in tangent that there are only going to be five abilities available on one, yes, ONE action bar with a sixth ability being an Ultimate, similar to Guild Wars 2 Elite skill. It's basically a powerful ability of epic-awesomeness, usually at least.

Although it may be minimal, it is not completely bare. The UI include necessities such as the crosshairs, mini map, small quest tracker and of course the health, stamina and magicka bars. The single hot bar also only appears while you are in combat. There is also no damage numbers that appear on screen, which personally I find a little bit strange.

Combat

Although Zenimax are trying to keep within Elder Scrolls territory, there are still some things that have to be at least tweaked in order to work in an MMO. A prime example of this would be the combat. It is going to be very similar to Skyrim's combat, but not as impactful and physics based. It is somewhat a hybrid between TERA and Guild Wars 2. But in no means is it a hotkey based MMO. Period.

Your abilities are based entirely on your Stamina and Magicka. Similar to Skyrim, your attacks will become more sluggish depending on the amount of stamina you have. Also, holding down the attack button (left mouse click) will result in more heavy, powerful attacks. Abilities such as, dodging, blocking, sprinting all use stamina. Also, unlike Skyrim, spells essentially don't need to be equipped as weapons into your hands before they are able to be used/casted. The reasoning is for this is basically to speed the game up a little, also Zenimax has been putting an emphasis on being able to build Hybrid classes, so by doing this, it somewhat forces spell casting classes to use their physical weapons, at least at lower levels.

Zenimax are really pulling out all the stocks in this interview aren't they? They also announced that they are bringing Stealth back! It is still the same old 'ctrl' to crouch and you enter into sneak mode, where-by you can sneak past enemies, etc. But that haven't mentioned about it being viable for Combat scenarios. So it looks like you may not be able to play the Rogue class. Although there's a long time to go before to release of the game, you never know. I just hope they bring back sneaking up behind enemies, like you could in Skyrim and killing them with the awesome stabby stabby finishing animations. That never gets old.

Other stuff that you may or may not care about

• The Fighters and Mages Guilds will be implemented ready for launch, but we will have to wait for The Thieves Guild and The Dark Brotherhood to be added in later update or expansions.
• Dialogue takes place in a zoomed in first person, like Skyrim, with a dialogue menu that resembles Morrowinds.
• The game is also fully voice acted. Let's just hope they didn't put too much time and recourses into this feature like SWTOR did.

You might be able to understand the growing theme here. It's very... Elder Scrolls-esk. And so it should be, right? I think the fear that a lot of people have, or at least had, was the fact that they thought Zenimax was going to create a run of the mill WoW clone essentially. I mean, there's nothing wrong with that, but I feel that's not what the majority of MMO players want - They want something different. Not something completely alien to them, but just something to spice the MMO scene up a little.

That's just my thoughts anyway, be sure to leave yours in the comments below.