inglorious

Here’s an understatement: role playing games are complex. If you have any experience with an RPG you understand. The level of complexity packed into these games can be quite impressive. It’s a part of their appeal. Even action RPGs like Runic’s Torchlight still require inventory management, ability/spell selection, stat management and armor outfitting. Things get even more complex with MMORPGs and more classic single player RPGs and as a result of their complexity we’ve been left swimming in row after row of icons, windows, quest panels, conversation bubbles, guild management popups, and on and on and on.

The most complex are the games that seek to recreate the richness present in the old table top systems. These tend to be massive, with expansive worlds, full of rich cultures, unique characters, and deep engaging quests. As a result that level of complexity has, for a long time, left players scrounging in menu after menu. We’ve all been there, and more often than not, leading those games was Bethesda‘s landmark series The Elder Scrolls.

I will fully admit to being a fan of TES games. I have played them all, from Arena to Daggerfall, Morrowind and Oblivion, I have marked many hours in the world of Tamriel. I’ve been a wizard, a warrior, a thief and all manner of combinations in between. However as both a player and a UX professional I have always struggled with Bethesda’s lackluster UI. Frankly they just haven’t been good. Morrowind was a series of windows that were difficult to manage, Oblivion was clunky and frustrating living a bizarre partial existence between the desktop and console worlds. These interfaces have become so commonplace in Bethesda games that when they announced Skyrim, the next chapter in the TES series, I fully intended to be less than thrilled with the game’s UI.

I think I might be wrong.

Before I delve any further, I should point out Skyrim is currently in development, and still months away from release, so we may yet see changes. However the recent gameplay videos that came out of E3 have shown more and more of Skyrim, and while screenshots tend to forgo any HUD or UI we were able to catch a glimpse during a 14-minute interview with Todd Howard on G4. Not only were we allowed to see how the game looks and feels but how the UI works, and based on what I saw, it works well.

Instead of the heavy UI we’ve seen in the past, Bethesda has opted for a clean almost utilitarian design. Gone are the illegible stylized type, parchment backgrounds, and thick wood textured borders. Everything has been streamlined, and as a result the interface takes a back seat to the gameplay. You are in an out of the HUD only spending as little or as much time as you desire. Navigation through the UI is done from a central hub allowing users to move to four distinct sections. Magic. Map. Items. Skills. Each showing a downplayed UI style that gives hints at fantasy elements without being overpowering.

Even the HUD interface is downplayed. A simple and legible typeface has been chosen as opposed to some fantasy-esque script that we’ve seen in the past. Selecting a spell or more powerful shouts, binding weapons and interacting with characters are all done though simple non-intrusive menus. It’s all very Apple-like in form and style, and that’s intentional, in fact in a recent interview with Game Informer, game director Todd Howard had this to say regarding the Skyrim interface:

”You know in iTunes when you look at all your music you get to flip through it and look at the covers and it becomes tangible? One of our goals was ‘What if Apple made a fantasy game? How would this look?’ It’s very good at getting through lots of data quickly, which is always a struggle with our stuff.”

You can see that. While I am no fan of the iTunes UI, taking cues from Apple is a great direction for a game interface. Too often we see UI get bogged down in style and lack in function. Games become over-complicated to a point where they feel over-designed. (Just play some of the free-to-play MMOs out there and you’ll see what I mean.) Seeing Bethesda take this direction is a nice departure from the typical RPG fare and we should be excited about the direction towards a clean and streamlined interface.