The Elder Scrolls is a series of action role-playing video games mainly created by Bethesda Game Studios and released by Bethesda Softworks. The games allow players to explore and make choices freely in an open world. Most games in the series have received good reviews and sold many copies. The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (2002), The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (2006), and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2011) each won Game of the Year awards from many game review websites. The series has sold more than 90 million copies worldwide.
In the series' fictional universe, each game takes place on the continent of Tamriel. The setting includes elements similar to ancient empires, such as a powerful Roman-like Empire, as well as medieval fantasy themes, such as limited technology, widespread use of magic, and the presence of mythical creatures. The continent is divided into provinces where humans and humanoid fantasy races, such as elves, orcs, and anthropomorphic animals, live. A common story in the series is that a chosen hero (controlled by the player) rises to stop a dangerous threat, such as a harmful being or an enemy army.
The series began with The Elder Scrolls: Arena in 1994. It has since released five main games, with the last three each having two or three expansions. It has also created several related games. In 2014, a game called The Elder Scrolls Online, which allows many players to play together online, was released by ZeniMax Online Studios, a company connected to Bethesda.
Development history
Before working on The Elder Scrolls series, Bethesda mainly created sports and action games. From its founding until the 1994 release of Arena, Bethesda made ten games, six of which were sports games, such as Hockey League Simulator, NCAA Basketball: Road to the Final Four (1991/1992 Edition), and Wayne Gretzky Hockey. The other four were adaptations of other media, mostly from the Terminator series. Bethesda’s focus changed when it began making its first action role-playing game. Designer Ted Peterson said, "I remember talking to the guys at Sir-Tech who were working on Wizardry VII: Crusaders of the Dark Savant at the time, and them literally laughing at us for thinking we could do it." Ted Peterson worked with Vijay Lakshman as one of the first designers of what became Arena, a "medieval-style gladiator game."
Peterson and Lakshman were joined by Julian LeFay, who, according to Peterson, "really spear-headed the initial development of the series." Peterson, Lakshman, and LeFay were longtime fans of pen-and-paper role-playing games, which greatly influenced the creation of the world of Tamriel. They were also inspired by Looking Glass Studios' Ultima Underworld series, which shaped Arena’s design. Initially, Arena was not meant to be a role-playing game. Players and their teams would travel the world, fighting other teams in arenas until they became "grand champion" in the Imperial City, the world’s capital. Along the way, players could complete side quests with role-playing elements. As development continued, tournaments became less important, and side quests grew more significant. Role-playing features were added as the game expanded to include cities and dungeons beyond arenas. Eventually, the team decided to remove tournaments entirely and focus on quests and dungeons, making the game a "full-blown role-playing game." Although arena combat was removed, the game was already printed with the title, so it was released as The Elder Scrolls: Arena. Lakshman, who worked at Christopher Weaver’s Bethesda Softworks, created the name "The Elder Scrolls," which came to mean "Tamriel’s mystical tomes of knowledge that told of its past, present, and future." The game’s initial voice-over was changed to begin: "It has been foretold in the Elder Scrolls…"
Bethesda missed its Christmas 1993 deadline for releasing Arena and instead released it in the first quarter of 1994, a "really serious mistake" for a small developer like Bethesda Softworks. The game’s packaging included a scantily clad female warrior, which worried distributors. This led to an initial distribution of only 20,000 units. Missing the Christmas sales season, the team worried they "had screwed the company." However, sales grew steadily as word-of-mouth spread. Despite some early software bugs and high system requirements, the game became a cult hit. Evaluations of its success ranged from "modest" to "wild." Still, the game remained popular with its audience. Game historian Matt Barton said, "The game set a new standard for this type of role-playing video game and showed how much room was left for innovation."
Work on The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall began after Arena’s release in March 1994. Ted Peterson was assigned as lead game designer. He aimed to make Daggerfall’s plot less "clichéd" than Arena’s and include a "complex series of adventures leading to multiple resolutions." Daggerfall replaced Arena’s experience-point-based system with one that rewarded players for role-playing activities with their characters. Daggerfall included an improved character generation engine with a GURPS-influenced class creation system, allowing players to create their own classes and assign their own skills. Daggerfall used the XnGine engine, one of the first truly 3D engines. The game featured a world the size of Great Britain, with 15,000 towns and a population of 750,000. It was inspired by analog games and literature, such as Dumas’s The Man in the Iron Mask and Vampire: The Masquerade. Released in September 1996, Daggerfall had initial bugs that upset consumers. These were fixed in later versions, leading to a more careful release schedule for future games.
After Daggerfall’s release, Bethesda started work on three projects: An Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire, The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard, and The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. Battlespire, originally titled Dungeon of Daggerfall: Battlespire, was the first to be released on November 30, 1997. Initially planned as an expansion for Daggerfall, it was later made a standalone game. Battlespire focused on dungeon exploration and offered multiplayer deathmatch mode, the only series title to do so before The Elder Scrolls Online in 2014. Redguard, released on October 31, 1998, was an action-adventure game inspired by Tomb Raider, Prince of Persia, and the Ultima series. Unlike other games, Redguard did not let players create their own characters. Instead, players played as the pre-made character "Cyrus the Redguard." Both games performed poorly with Bethesda’s target audience. Players used to the vast open spaces of Daggerfall disliked the smaller worlds in Redguard and Battlespire. Based on customer feedback, Bethesda focused more on creating large role-playing game worlds for future projects.
The third game in The Elder Scrolls series, Morrowind, was planned during Daggerfall’s development. Originally intended to cover the entire province of Morrowind and let players join all five Dunmer Great Houses, the scope was too large for the technology available at the time. At release, the game covered the central island of Vvardenfell and allowed players to join three of the Great Houses. The XnGine was replaced with Numerical Design Limited’s Gamebryo engine, which used Direct3D for advanced graphics, 32-bit textures, and skeletal animation. The game world was populated using methods developed for Redguard, with game objects crafted by hand instead of generated randomly.
Creating Morrowind took "close to 100-man-years to create." Bethesda tripled its staff and spent the first year developing The Elder Scrolls Construction Set, which allowed the team to balance and modify the game easily. Ted Peterson, who left after Daggerfall’s release, returned to work on in-game material and lore. The PC version of Morrowind went gold on April 23, 2002, and was released in North America on May 1, with an Xbox version set for June 7. On January 3, 2002, Bethesda announced that Ubisoft would handle European distribution of Morrowind and eight other Bethesda games.
The expansion
Gameplay
The Elder Scrolls games are action role-playing games that include features from action and adventure games. In Arena, players gain experience points by killing monsters. When they reach a specific number, they level up. However, in Daggerfall, Morrowind, and Oblivion, character advancement depends on developing specific skills. Players improve their skills by using them, and they level up only when certain skills are fully developed. Skyrim introduced a different method: the more a skill is improved, the more it helps the character level up. This change focused more on character development than on initial character creation. The game engines' flexibility allows players to create and add new content, called mods, using The Elder Scrolls Construction Set.
The main series of The Elder Scrolls games highlights different aspects of gaming compared to most role-playing games. An article from Joystiq in November 2006 compared BioWare's games to Bethesda's, noting differences in focus. Bethesda's games emphasized "aesthetic presentation and open-ended adventuring," while BioWare's focused on combat systems and modular design. Bethesda's designers also stated that their goal with the first game, Arena, was to create a world where players could be and do what they wanted, similar to pen-and-paper role-playing games. The Daggerfall manual included a design statement that said the developers aimed to "create a book with blank pages" and "a game that encourages exploration and rewards curiosity." Players are given choices, such as doing good or pursuing evil, and these choices are left open, "just like in real life." This design continued with Morrowind, even though the focus on graphics became more important again. During Morrowind’s development, Bethesda increased its staff to enhance the game’s visual quality. The developers said they wanted to "exceed the visual polish of other games" and "put The Elder Scrolls back into the forefront of game innovation."
Series overview
The Elder Scrolls takes place in a high fantasy world that includes ideas from real-world cultures. Like many high fantasy stories, The Elder Scrolls games are serious and large in scope. They often focus on big conflicts between people and powerful supernatural or evil forces. Many races live in the world of The Elder Scrolls. Some, like humans, orcs, and elves, are common in fantasy stories. Others, like the lizard-like Argonians and cat-like Khajiit, are less common. Some races, like the extinct Dwemer, known as "dwarves," are unusual because they are classified as a type of elf but are highly advanced in technology and live underground. Magic, mythical creatures, political groups, medieval cities, and stories based on prophecies and legends are common in the games.
The Elder Scrolls is known for its detailed world. Instead of a narrator telling the story, the lore is written by fictional scholars in the game. These scholars may have biases or make mistakes, so players are encouraged to think for themselves. Fans have created many stories and theories about the game’s world. The developers do not confirm or deny fan ideas, and some contradictions in the lore are explained as errors in scholarship. Other differences, like different endings to earlier games, are said to be caused by magic. Some parts of the lore are left unclear so players can decide what is true. For example, players can choose to believe or reject being a hero from a prophecy.
The first game, Arena, had little lore and few elements that later games would include. The second game, Daggerfall, introduced a detailed system of gods and myths. This was done to improve on the writing in Arena, which was criticized for being weak. After Daggerfall, the game designers worked to learn more about the world’s history and religions. The game’s beliefs about the universe are inspired by a real-world religious idea called Gnosticism. There are conflicting stories about how the world was created. One says some gods were tricked into giving up power to create the mortal world. These gods became the Eight Divines, who are worshipped as kind deities. A ninth god, Talos, was added after the death of Tiber Septim, who united the continent of Tamriel into one empire. Some people, especially elves, disagree with Talos being a god. This disagreement is a major conflict in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Another group of gods, the Daedra, are more powerful and live in a separate world called Oblivion. They are not always evil but are often shown as lacking emotions.
Most games in The Elder Scrolls series take place on the continent of Tamriel, which is part of the planet Nirn. Exceptions include An Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire, which is set in a different dimension; parts of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and its expansion, Shivering Isles, which are in Oblivion; and quests in Oblivion from later games. Other continents on Nirn, like Akavir and Yokuda, exist, but people in Tamriel know little about them.
Tamriel has nine provinces, each ruled by a different race. Black Marsh is home to Argonians; Cyrodiil to Imperials; Elsweyr to Khajiit; Hammerfell to Redguards; High Rock to Bretons; Morrowind to Dunmer (Dark Elves); Skyrim to Nords; Summerset Isle to Altmer (High Elves); and Valenwood to Bosmer (Wood Elves). Orcs, or Orsimer, live in scattered settlements and once had a kingdom in High Rock called Orsinium.
Although many empires have ruled Tamriel over thousands of years, most games take place during the Third Cyrodiilic Empire, led by the Septim family. In Arena, players help free Emperor Uriel Septim VII from a magical prison. In Daggerfall, players find a powerful artifact and give it to one of several groups. In Morrowind, players are believed to be the reincarnation of an elven hero and help stop a rebellion. In Oblivion, a cult opens a portal to a dark realm, killing the emperor and causing a crisis. In Skyrim, the Empire is weakened by a war with the Aldmeri Dominion and must fight a dragon that was thought to be extinct.
The Elder Scrolls Online is a prequel to the Third Empire, set during a 600-year period between the Second and Third Empires. The game follows a player who is sacrificed by followers of a god called Molag Bal but returns with help from a former emperor. The player joins one of three groups fighting for control of Tamriel and must unite them to stop Molag Bal’s plan to take over the world.
The Elder Scrolls themselves are rarely part of the story, usually only mentioned as a prophecy. They first appear in Oblivion as an ancient, unreadable text studied by monks. In Skyrim, the Scrolls are linked to the game’s creation story and can cause madness if read. They are used in the main quest to learn how to defeat a powerful dragon. A later expansion adds a quest to use the Scrolls to help or stop a vampire.
At E3 2016, Bethesda Games announced new details about The Elder Scrolls Online.
Other media
In 2009, science-fiction author Gregory Keyes wrote The Infernal City, a book set about 40 years after the Oblivion Crisis. In 2011, Keyes published Lord of Souls, which is the second book in the The Elder Scrolls series.
Reception
In 2012, Complex listed The Elder Scrolls as number 20 on its list of the best video game franchises. In 2013, GameSpot named The Elder Scrolls the Greatest Game Series of the Decade, defeating 64 other competitors. The Elder Scrolls won the final round, receiving 52.5% of the vote, while the Grand Theft Auto series received 47.5%.
The fourth main game in the series, Oblivion, was first given a Teen rating by the ESRB. However, after reports that the developers did not share details about content that was not part of normal gameplay but conflicted with the Teen rating, the ESRB reviewed the game again. The ESRB then raised the rating to Mature, an unusual action that received public attention.
In August 2011, Bethesda Softworks contacted Mojang, the developer of Minecraft, stating that the name "Scrolls" for its new game might conflict with Bethesda's trademark for The Elder Scrolls. On March 10, 2012, Markus Persson, a leader at Mojang, announced that an agreement had been reached. The agreement prevents Mojang from using the name "Scrolls" in future Minecraft games.
In May 2019, Bethesda Softworks released a free tabletop role-playing game called Elsweyr. The game was accused of copying the plot of the Dungeons & Dragons adventure "The Black Road," which was written by Paige Leitman and Ben Heisler. The game used similar story elements and replaced some words with synonyms. After Leitman shared details about the similarities on Facebook, the game was removed from The Elder Scrolls Online's Facebook page.