The Elder Scrolls Online Bedlam Veil Preview - Celebrating 10 Years In Style

The Elder Scrolls Online’s Bedlam Veil seems like an ordinary mountainscape, its jutting rocks walling you into a grassy plain where pink petals blossom ღand giant autumnal trees sway in the breeze. It’s picturesque, but look a little closer, and you’ll see stone obelisks suspended in the sky as an oppressive red gloom suffocates everything around you.

Familiar fiery por♍tals erupt, and we’re sent on another adventure, diving headfirst without care to unravel the trꦰuth behind this world. It’s been ten years, but ESO’s dungeons are still as exciting to delve into as they’ve ever been.

Bedlam Veil is one of two new dungeons launching ahead of the new Gold Road chapter which arrives on June 3, and it’s perfect for the celebrations taking place over the next two years as the MMORPG approaches its 10th anniversary. ESO launched a decade ago (nine years ago on consoles), and here we h♋ave a dungeon that mixes old and new to create something fresh.

We see the inner workings of the Maelstrom Arena, a solo trial created by the Demiprince Fa-Nuit-Hen. Once again, he welco🎃mes us to his realm to fight, this time with allies, as we traverse the very place where each level of the arena was first designed. We glimpse Maelstrom in its rawest form as it’s being constructed, but there are also Infinite Archive enemies dotted about the landscape lifted right from the new roguelike mode.

Bedlam Veil brings t✅he💦 past and present together in a way that celebrates the game’s history, but also seems distinctly aware of its future.

The Maelstrom Arena was added wit𒁃h the Wrothgar expansion way back in 2015, just a year after ESO launched.

The second boss you face is one of ESO’s best yet. We see the Maelstrom Arena’s glowing pylons, which fend off small swarms of spiders, littered across the battlefield; bubbling green pools invite us to wash away poison; hoarvors stumbl🃏e across the room, ready to explode and rip the webs from said pylons, and Maxus the Many unleashes his army of clones. It’s all the hallmarks of the Maelstrom Arena’s most iconic levels in one, with allies by our side ✱for the first time.

Inside the boss’ domain is haunting. The Maelstrom bosses whom we’ve struggled to kil♋l countless times before are hung in the air by ethereal purple webs, guarded by a towering arachnid figure. Each of them is called down to fight, unleashing their respective arena’s effects onto the boss zone, gradually ramping up the difficulty as we learn to juggle several stages of the Maelstrom at once.

Elder Scrolls Online - Bedlam Veil Preview

It’s a tough brawl filled with nostalgia, but if you haven’t fought in the Maelstrom Arena before, Zಞenimax has taken care to ease you into the mechanics. The path leading to the boss is littered with pylons and poison pools, teaching you how they work so that you’re not overwhelmed when coming face-to-face with the boss. And for old players returning to the fray, it’s a crash course bringing you back up to speed.

By this point, Zenimax has perfected its craft when it comes to d😼ungeons. Every path is an intuitive gauntlet designed to prepare you for each boss, and we not only see that in the mix of Maelstrom mechanics, but also in the crystal Infinite Archive warriors who are made invulnerab🐻le by sorcerers lurking further back. Later, in a boss fight against a larger crystal warrior, those same sorcerers appear, making the boss themselves invulnerable.

The developers told me that Bedlam Veil was designღed in part as a respons🐼e to the call for a multiplayer Maelstrom Arena, finally bringing elements of it into a more cooperative setting.

There are also three puzzles dotted about the dungeon for those willing to slow down and explore, which don’t just reward you with loot, but also give you boons and make the final bos🐈s much easier.

Speaking of, that boss is a true test of mettle.🧸 We stand atop a vault where every ledge leads to certain death, fending off a Daedra known𓆉 as The Blind. She’s building a siege weapon with an artefact known as the Echonir, and in our fight against her, she summons four skeletons that continually send area-of-effect attacks down one of four paths. She intermittently closes off one of the paths, so standing still and spamming attacks is never an option.

It’s not just a battle of pressing the same buttons on a loop to dole out millions of damage, but of movement, perfecting our skills at dodging, and staying aware of our surroundings. There’s a fine line when it comes to making an encounter welcoming to new players and chall🔴enging to veterans, but Bedlam Veil pulls it off, introducing us to the routine of each boss before we face them while pressing us to use everything we know about the game to beat them as smoothly as possible.

Bedlam Veil is a dungeon that perfectly encapsulates how much ESO has grown in ten years while simulꦰtaneou💮sly celebrating everything that came before. For an anniversary milestone like 2024, it feels right at home, welcoming newcomers and giving veterans something tougher to chew on.