| The Elder Scrolls | |
|---|---|
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| Genre | Action role-playing |
| Developers |
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| Publishers |
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| Platforms | |
| First release | The Elder Scrolls: Arena March 25, 1994 |
| Latest release | The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered April 22, 2025 |
The Elder Scrolls is a series ofaction role-playingvideo games primarily developed byBethesda Game Studios and published byBethesda Softworks. The series focuses onfree-form gameplay in anopen world. Most games in the series have been critically and commercially successful, withThe Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (2002),The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (2006) andThe Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2011) all winningGame of the Year awards from multiple outlets. The series has sold more than 59 million copies worldwide.[a]
Within the series'fictional universe, each game takes place on the continent of Tamriel. The setting combines pre-medieval real-world elements, such as a powerfulRoman-like Empire, withhigh fantasy medieval themes, including limited technology, widespread magic use, and the existence of many mythological creatures. The continent is split into a number of provinces inhabited by humans andhumanoid fantasy races such aselves,orcs andanthropomorphic animals. A common theme in the lore is that a chosen hero (represented by the player's character) rises to defeat an impending threat, typically a malevolent being or an antagonistic army.
Since debuting withThe Elder Scrolls: Arena in 1994, the series has produced a total of five main games (of which the last three have each featured two or threeexpansions) as well as severalspin-offs.[7] In 2014, amassively multiplayer online role-playing game,The Elder Scrolls Online, was released by Bethesda's affiliatedZeniMax subsidiaryZeniMax Online Studios.
| 1994 | Arena |
|---|---|
| 1995 | |
| 1996 | II: Daggerfall |
| 1997 | Battlespire |
| 1998 | Adventures: Redguard |
| 1999–2001 | |
| 2002 | III: Morrowind |
| III: Tribunal | |
| 2003 | III: Bloodmoon |
| Travels: Stormhold | |
| 2004 | Travels: Dawnstar |
| Travels: Shadowkey | |
| 2005 | |
| 2006 | IV: Oblivion |
| IV: Knights of the Nine | |
| 2007 | IV: Shivering Isles |
| 2008–2010 | |
| 2011 | V: Skyrim |
| 2012 | V: Dawnguard |
| V: Hearthfire | |
| V: Dragonborn | |
| 2013 | |
| 2014 | Online |
| 2015 | |
| 2016 | V: Special Edition |
| 2017 | Legends |
| V VR | |
| Online Morrowind | |
| 2018 | Online Summerset |
| 2019 | Online Elsweyr |
| 2020 | Blades |
| Online Greymoor | |
| 2021 | Online Blackwood |
| V Anniversary | |
| 2022 | Online High Isle |
| 2023 | Online Necrom |
| 2024 | Online Gold Road |
| Castles | |
| 2025 | IV: Oblivion Remastered |
| TBA | VI |
Prior to working onThe Elder Scrolls series, Bethesda had worked predominantly with sports and action games. In the six years from its founding toArena's 1994 release, Bethesda had released ten games, six of them sports games,[8] with titles such asHockey League Simulator,NCAA Basketball: Road to the Final Four ('91/'92 Edition), andWayne Gretzky Hockey,[9] and the remaining four adaptations from other media,[8] primarily theTerminator series.[9] Bethesda's course changed abruptly when it began working on its first action role-playing game. DesignerTed Peterson recalls: "I remember talking to the guys atSir-Tech who were doingWizardry VII: Crusaders of the Dark Savant at the time, and them literally laughing at us for thinking we could do it."[10] Ted Peterson worked alongside Vijay Lakshman as one of the initial designers of what became known asArena, a "medieval-style gladiator game".[10][11]
Peterson and Lakshman were joined byJulian Lefay who, according to Peterson, "really spear-headed the initial development of the series".[10] Peterson, Lakshman, and LeFay were longtime aficionados of pen-and-paper role-playing games,[10] which greatly influenced the creation of the world ofTamriel.[11] They were also fans ofLooking Glass Studios'Ultima Underworld series, their main inspiration forArena.[10] Initially,Arena was not to be a role-playing game at all. The player, and a team of their fighters, would travel the world, fighting other teams in their arenas until the player became "grand champion" in the world's capital, the Imperial City.[11] Along the way, side quests of a more role-playing nature could be completed. As the process of development progressed, however, the tournaments became less important and the side quests more.[10] Role-playing game elements were added, as it expanded to include cities outside the arenas, and dungeons beyond the cities.[11] Eventually it was decided to drop the idea of tournaments altogether, and focus on quests and dungeons,[10] making the game a "full-blown [role-playing game]".[11] Although the team had dropped all arena combat from the game, all the material had already been printed up with the title, so the game went to market asThe Elder Scrolls: Arena. Lakshman, who then worked at Christopher Weaver's Bethesda Softworks, came up with the name ofThe Elder Scrolls[10] and the words eventually came to mean "Tamriel's mystical tomes of knowledge that told of its past, present, and future".[11] The game's initialvoice-over was changed in response, beginning: "It has been foretold in the Elder Scrolls ..."[10]
Bethesda missed their Christmas 1993 deadline for releasingArena, and the game was released in the first quarter of 1994 instead, a "really serious [mistake] for a small developer/publisher like Bethesda Softworks". The packaging included a scantily clad female warrior, which further contributed to distributor concern, leading to an initial distribution of only 20,000 units. Having missed the Christmas sales season, the development team was concerned that they "had screwed the company". Nevertheless, sales continued to grow, month after month, as news of the game was passed by word-of-mouth.[10] Despite some initialsoftware bugs,[10] and the formidable demands the game made on players' machines,[12] it became a cult hit.[8] Evaluations of the game's success varied from "modest"[12] to "wild".[8] Still, the game maintained traction with its audience. Game historian Matt Barton concluded that "the game set a new standard for this type ofrole-playing video game, and demonstrated just how much room was left for innovation".[12]
Work onThe Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall began afterArena's release in March 1994.[13]Ted Peterson was assigned the role of lead game designer.[10] He endeavoured to makeDaggerfall's plot less "clichéd" thanArena's and involve a "complex series of adventures leading to multiple resolutions".[10] WithDaggerfall,Arena's experience-point-based system was replaced with one rewarding the player for conducting role-playing activities with their character.[13]Daggerfall came equipped with an improved character generation engine, one that included aGURPS-influencedclass creation system, offering players the chance to create their own classes, and assign their own skills.[10][14]Daggerfall was developed with anXnGine engine, one of the first truly3D engines.Daggerfall realized a game world the size of Great Britain,[13] filled with 15,000 towns and a population of 750,000.[8] It was influenced by analog games and literature that Julian LeFay or Ted Peterson happened to be playing or reading at the time, such asDumas'sThe Man in the Iron Mask andVampire: The Masquerade.[10] It was released in September 1996.[15] LikeArena,Daggerfall's initial release suffered from some bugs, leaving consumers disgruntled.[12] These early anomalies were fixed in later versions. This experience led to a more prudent release schedule for future games.[16]
Following the release ofDaggerfall, work began on three separate projects at once:An Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire,The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard, andThe Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind.Battlespire, originally titledDungeon of Daggerfall: Battlespire, was the first of the three to be released,[17] on November 30, 1997.[18] Originally designed as anexpansion pack forDaggerfall, it was eventually rebranded as a standalone game.Battlespire focused on dungeon romping and offered multiplayer gaming in the form of aplayer versus playerdeathmatch mode, the only series title to do so[17] prior to the release ofThe Elder Scrolls Online in 2014.Redguard was the second of the three titles to be released, on October 31, 1998.[19] It was anaction-adventure game inspired byTomb Raider,Prince of Persia, and theUltima series.[20]Redguard did not offer the player the chance to create their own character. Instead, players would play the prefabricated "Cyrus the Redguard".[20] Both games did poorly with Bethesda's target audience. Players used to the vast open spaces ofDaggerfall did not take well to the reduced worlds ofRedguard andBattlespire. Based upon its customers' clear desire for massive role-playing game worlds, Bethesda redoubled its efforts to build the next major chapter.[8]
The third title inThe Elder Scrolls series was conceived during the development ofDaggerfall.[21] Initially designed to encompass the whole province of Morrowind and allow the player to join all five Dunmer Great Houses, it was decided that the scope of the game was too much for the technology available at the time.[21] At publication, it covered the province's central isle of Vvardenfell and allowed the player to join three of the Great Houses. The XnGine was scrapped and replaced with Numerical Design Limited'sGamebryo, aDirect3D-powered engine withtransform, clipping, and lighting capacity,[22] 32-bit textures and skeletal animation.[23] It was decided that the game world would be populated using the methods the team had developed inRedguard; with the game objects crafted by hand, rather than generated using random algorithmic methods.[24]
The project took "close to 100-man-years to create". Bethesda tripled their staff and spent the first year developingThe Elder Scrolls Construction Set. This allowed the game staff to easily balance the game and to modify it in small increments rather than large.[21]Ted Peterson, who had left following the release ofDaggerfall, returned to work as an author of in-game material, and as a general consultant on the lore-based aspects of the work.[25] The PC version ofMorrowind hadgone gold by April 23, 2002,[26][27] and was released on May 1 in North America,[28] with the Xbox release set at June 7.[29] On January 3, Bethesda announced that game publisherUbisoft would take control ofMorrowind's European distribution, in addition to those of eight other Bethesda games.[30]
Theexpansion packThe Elder Scrolls III: Tribunal went gold on November 1[31] and was released, with little fanfare,[32] on November 6.[33]Tribunal puts the player in the self-contained, walled city of Mournhold, which can be teleported to from Morrowind's land mass.[31] Development on theexpansion began afterMorrowind shipped, giving the developers a mere five-month development cycle to release the game. The prior existence of theConstruction Set, however, meant that the team "already had the tools in place to add content and features very quickly".[34] Interface improvements, and specifically an overhaul ofMorrowind's journal system, were among the key goals.[34][35]Morrowind's second expansion,The Elder Scrolls III: Bloodmoon, went gold by May 23,[36] and was released on June 6.[37] It had been worked on since the release ofTribunal.[38] In the expansion, the player travels to the frozen island of Solstheim and is asked to investigate the uneasiness of the soldiers stationed there.
Work onThe Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion began in 2002, afterMorrowind's publication.[40]Oblivion was developed byBethesda Softworks, and the initialXbox 360 and PC releases were co-published by Bethesda andTake-Two Interactive subsidiary2K Games.[41][42]Oblivion was released on March 21, 2006.[43] The game centers around an event referred to as "The Oblivion Crisis", where portals to the planes of Oblivion open and release hordes of Daedra upon Tamriel. Developers working onOblivion focused on providing a tighter storyline, more developed characters,[44][45] and to make information in the game world more accessible to players.[46]Oblivion features improvedAI,[47][48] improved physics,[49] and improvedgraphics.[50][51][52] Bethesda developed and implemented procedural content creation tools in the creation ofOblivion's terrain, leading to landscapes that are more complex and realistic than those of past titles, but had less of a drain on Bethesda's staff.[53][54] Two downloadable expansion packs,Knights of the Nine andShivering Isles were released in 2006 and 2007, respectively.[55][56]Knights of the Nine added a questline surrounding the search for a set of Crusader relics, whileShivering Isles added the eponymous plane to the game.
Aremaster ofOblivion was revealed and subsequently released on April 22, 2025.
In August 2010,Todd Howard revealed Bethesda was working on a game that had been in development since the release ofOblivion, and that progress was very far along. While the game was conceptualized afterOblivion's release, main development was restricted until afterFallout 3 was released.[57] In November, Kristian West, then theeditor-in-chief ofEurogamer's Danish outlet, reported overhearing a developer on a plane talking about the project; a newThe Elder Scrolls game,[58][59] although Bethesda did not comment on the report. At theSpike Video Game Awards in December, Howard appeared on stage to unveil a teaser trailer and announce the title of the game.[60]The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim was released on November 11, 2011, to widespread critical acclaim. It was awarded 'Game of the Year' by IGN,[61] Spike[62] and others. The game is set after the events ofOblivion, when the greatdragon Alduin the World Eater returns to Skyrim; a beast whose existence threatens all life in Tamriel. The setting is heavily based on Scandinavia, as seen in the climate and creatures the character encounters. Three pieces of add-ons were released on PC andXbox 360 in 2012 –Dawnguard,Hearthfire andDragonborn, with aPlayStation 3 release in February 2013.Dawnguard added two joinable factions and an associated questline revolving aroundVampires and the Dawnguard, a group of vampire hunters, whileHearthfire added more home customization options including a house creation kit and the ability to adopt children.Dragonborn added the island of Solstheim to the northeast. On October 28, 2016,Skyrim – Special Edition was released.[63] In 2016, on the fifth anniversary ofSkyrim's release,Zen Studios developed and released avirtualpinball adaptation of the game as part of theBethesda Pinball collection, which became available as part ofZen Pinball 2,Pinball FX 2[64] andPinball FX 3,[65] as well as a separatefree-to-play app foriOS andAndroid mobile devices.[66] On November 17, 2017,Skyrim VR was released forPlayStation 4.[67] On June 10, 2018,Skyrim: Very Special Edition, a voice-activated text adventure game poking fun at the game's many releases, was released forAmazon Alexa devices.[68] The player character, Dragonborn, is a downloadable Mii fighter costume in the Nintendo crossover fighting gameSuper Smash Bros. Ultimate.[69]
On May 3, 2012,The Elder Scrolls Online was revealed.The Elder Scrolls Online was released for Windows and macOS on April 4, 2014, with the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 versions initially slated to follow in June 2014 but later delayed until June 9, 2015.[70] The game originally required a subscription to play, but this requirement was dropped on March 17, 2015.[71] There is however a subscription service entitled "ESO Plus" which grants access to all current and future downloadable content (DLC). The DLC is otherwise available for individual purchase in the Crown Store. Additionally, the optional subscription grants various perks that allow players to progress slightly faster than a free player, and grants them a payment of 1650 crowns per month.[72] On June 14, 2015,The Elder Scrolls: Legends, a collectible card game, was announced byBethesda during theElectronic Entertainment Expo 2015. It was released on March 9, 2017, forMicrosoft Windows and later that year forAndroid,iOS, andmacOS. The game's servers remained online until January 30, 2025.
At Bethesda's E3 2018 press conference, Todd Howard announcedThe Elder Scrolls: Blades, originally planned for release in Q3 2018, and it was originally expected to be released for Apple and Android phones first, followed by PC and console, includingVR. The player is able to play as a member of the faction called the Blades, who has returned home to their town to find it destroyed. There are survival, arena, and town-building modes, with multiplayer support through its arena and town-building mode, as well as cross-platform. The game is also able to be played in portrait mode, unusual for a role-playing game.[73][74] The early access ofBlades began March 27, 2019 for those who pre-ordered the game.Blades was expected to be fully released some time in early 2019,[75] before being released forAndroid,iOS andNintendo Switch in May 2020.[76]The Elder Scrolls: Castles, a mobile spin-off game similar toFallout Shelter, was released for Android in early access on September 28, 2023,[77] formally releasing on Android and iOS on September 10, 2024.
Elder Scrolls VI was first announced as being in pre-production duringE3 2018,[78] along withStarfield.[79]Phil Spencer said thatTheElder Scrolls VI would be coming out after Playground Games'Fable title.[80]The game was expected to be released exclusively on PC and Xbox,[81] following Microsoft's 2021 acquisition of Bethesda.[82] In late 2025, Todd Howard commented on the latest installment to the series, preaching patience to fans and stating the game is still a long way off.[83]
The Elder Scrolls games areaction role-playing games and include elements taken from action and adventure games. InArena, players advance by killing monsters (and thereby gainingexperience points) until a preset value is met, whereupon they level-up. However, inDaggerfall,Morrowind, andOblivion, the series took a skill-based approach to character advancement. Players develop their characters' skills by applying them and only level-up when a certain set of skills have been developed.Skyrim took a new approach, where the more a skill is leveled, the more it helps to level the character. This shifted the focus away from character creation and more onto character development. The flexibility of the games' engines has facilitated the release of game extensions (ormods) throughThe Elder Scrolls Construction Set.
The Elder Scrolls main series of games emphasizes different aspects of the gaming experience than most role-playing games. A brief article by Joystiq in early November 2006 comparedBioWare's creations to Bethesda's by noting a difference in emphasis. Bethesda's creations focused on "aesthetic presentation and open-ended adventuring"; BioWare's on a combat system and modular architecture.[84] This overarching aim has been noted by their designers as well. Bethesda has described their motivations in creating the first series game,Arena, as those of any good pen-and-paper role-playing games: creating an environment in which the player could be what the player wants and do what the player wants.[85]Daggerfall's manual begins with a design manifesto, declaring the developers' intention to "create a book with blank pages" and "a game designed to encourage exploration and reward curiosity". Choices, in the form of paths taken by the player, to do good, to chase after evil, are left open to the player, "just like in real life".[86] This design trend continued withMorrowind, following the hiatus of similarly epic games in the interim, though Joystiq's previously noted insistence on graphics came again to the fore. During the development ofMorrowind, Bethesda tripled its staff, so as to perfectly color its newly hand-made world. In their own words, "We knew we had to exceed the visual polish of the other games on the market, and we made it our goal to putThe Elder Scrolls back into the forefront of game innovation."[87]
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The Elder Scrolls takes place in ahigh fantasy world with influences from real world cultures.[88]: 138 Like most works of high fantasy,The Elder Scrolls games are typically serious in tone and epic in scope, dealing with themes of a grand struggle against a supernatural or evil force. Manyraces exist in the world ofThe Elder Scrolls, some typical of high fantasy works, such as humans,orcs andelves; some atypical, such as thelizard-like Argonians andcat-like Khajiit; and some subversions, such as the extinct Dwemer, known colloquially as "dwarves", who follow the high fantasy stereotype of being subterranean, skilledmetallurgists and masons, but are actually classified as a variety of elf who are highly technologically advanced. As is also typical in high fantasy works, magic and sorcery, mythical creatures, factions with their own political agendas, walled medieval cities and strongholds, and plot elements driven by prophecies and legends are common.
The Elder Scrolls is known for its attention to detail, including extensive lore, scenery and back story. There is no omniscient narrator. Instead, the lore is presented in-universe, as written by the fictional scholars who inhabit the world, and it is subject to their biases and speculation. Players are encouraged to form their own interpretations of the lore and have developed extensive fan works. The developers avoid invalidating or overruling fan theories throughcanon. Internal inconsistencies are explained as errors in scholarship. Some inconsistencies, such as incorporating mutually exclusive endings to earlier games, are intentionally introduced and explained as magical paradoxes.[89] Other elements of the lore are intentionally contradictory or made ambiguous to allow players to decide for themselves what is true. Players can, for example, deny being a prophesied hero or accept the role.[90]
The first game in the series,Arena, featured little in the way of lore and lacked many elements that would come to define the series.[91] An elaborate system of gods and myths were introduced in the second game,Daggerfall.[7] The lore's complexity came from a desire to improve on the writing inArena, which had been criticized as lackluster.[92]
AfterDaggerfall, the designers focused on further expanding the lore once they realized they still did not know much about the world's fictional history or religions.[90] The series'fictional cosmology is inspired byGnosticism.[93] There are contradictorycreation myths, one of which claims that some of the gods were tricked into creating the mortal world, surrendering a portion of their power. These became the Eight Divines (also known as Aedra), who are worshipped as benevolent deities. A Ninth Divine, Talos, was added upon the death of Tiber Septim, who was the first to unite Tamriel under a single empire. Tiber Septim's apotheosis as Talos remains controversial, especially among elven races, and is one of the major conflicts ofThe Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. A separate pantheon of more demonic deities known as the Daedra retain their full power and reside in Oblivion, a separate dimension.[94] Individual Daedra are not necessarily evil, though they are often depicted as lacking empathy.[95]
The Elder Scrolls games primarily take place on the continent of Tamriel, located on the planet of Nirn.[96] The exceptions areAn Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire, which is set in a different dimension; portions ofThe Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and the entirety of its expansion,Shivering Isles, which take place in Oblivion;[97] quests in Oblivion during theDawnguard andDragonborn add-ons ofThe Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim; and further quests in Oblivion fromThe Elder Scrolls Online. Other continents exist on Nirn aside from Tamriel, such as Akavir, Pyandonea, Yokuda, and Atmora, but the people of Tamriel have little to no contact with these other continents and therefore do not possess much verifiable knowledge about them.[98]
Tamriel comprises nine provinces, each of which is dominated by a distinct race: Black Marsh is home to the Argonians; Cyrodiil is home to the Imperials; Elsweyr is home to the Khajiit; Hammerfell is home to the Redguards; High Rock is home to the Bretons; Morrowind is home to the Dunmer, or Dark Elves; Skyrim is home to the Nords; Summerset Isle is home to the Altmer, or High Elves; and Valenwood is home to the Bosmer, or Wood Elves. A tenth race, the Orsimer, or Orcs, reside in settlements scattered across Tamriel and, at some points in history, a kingdom inside High Rock known as Orsinium.[99]
Although various empires have controlled Tamriel over its several thousand years of recorded history, most games in the series have taken place during the Third Cyrodiilic Empire, which initially unites the entire continent under the reign of the Septim dynasty. InArena, players are tasked with freeing the Emperor Uriel Septim VII from a magical prison engineered by his court wizard, who has usurped the throne and magically disguised himself as the Emperor. InDaggerfall, Uriel VII tasks the player with finding a powerful artifact. The player can give it to any of several factions, which will use it to reshape the regional power structure. InMorrowind, the player is prophesied to be the reincarnation of a great elven hero. Taking advantage of this, the Empire tasks the player with stabilizing the province of Morrowind by putting down a rebellion by a would-be god. InOblivion, a religious cult opens a dimensional gate to a Hell-like realm and throws the Empire into chaos by killing Uriel VII and all of his known heirs. Although the player assists an illegitimate royal heir in closing the dimensional gate, the heir's heroic sacrifice brings an abrupt end to the Septim bloodline, causing a succession crisis that devastates the Empire and reduces it to arump state. InSkyrim, the Empire (now ruled by the Mede dynasty) is recovering from a horrific war against an elvenseparatistethnostate theAldmeri Dominion which covers most of southwest Tamriel, and whose terms of surrender have weakened the Empire even further and ultimately led to an ongoing civil war in the province of Skyrim. Amid these mounting tensions, Tamriel has to face the return of a legendary dragon known as "the World-Eater", long after dragons were thought to have gone extinct.
The Elder Scrolls Online serves as aprequel to the Third Empire storyline, taking place in the middle of a 600-yearinterregnum between the Second and Third Cyrodiilic Empires. The initial game follows the player, who has been sacrificed by followers of the Daedric prince Molag Bal, as they manage to return to the mortal plane with the help of a former Emperor masquerading as a prophet. The player must join one of the three different military alliances that are vying for control of Tamriel in the Three Banners War, but is ultimately tasked with uniting all three factions against Molag Bal's attempt to assimilate the entirety of the planet Nirn into his realm of Coldharbour.
The Elder Scrolls themselves play a very limited role in the storyline of the series, usually only as a framing plot device (i.e. "[the events in this game] were foretold in the Elder Scrolls..."). The Elder Scrolls are rarely referenced in the games.The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion marks the first appearance of the Scrolls in the final quest of the Thieves Guild quest-line.[7] The Scroll appears as an incomprehensible chart containing luminousglyphs.Oblivion further introduces monks who dedicate their lives to the study of the scrolls.[100] InThe Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, the Scrolls are integrated into the series' creation myth and are portrayed as potentially causing insanity when deciphered. The Scrolls are used in the main quest to travel back in time and learn how to defeat the antagonist, an immortal dragon.[101]Skyrim'sDawnguard expansion adds a quest to acquire the Scrolls to either assist or stop a vampire from blotting out the sun.[102]
AtE3 2016,Bethesda Game Studios directorTodd Howard reported that the studio was already working on a sixth installment inThe Elder Scrolls franchise, although it would still be "a very long way off"[103] and atE3 2017,Bethesda Softworks vice president ofpublic relations stated that no new title was in active development, and that they have "at least two major titles" to complete before this would change.[104] In an interview in June 2023, Todd Howard stated thatThe Elder Scrolls VI will come afterStarfield, and it may be the lastElder Scrolls he makes.[105]
AtE3 2018, Howard presented a short teaser trailer forThe Elder Scrolls VI and announced that it would be released followingStarfield.[106]
In 2009, science-fiction authorGregory Keyes releasedThe Infernal City, a novel set approximately 40 years after the Oblivion Crisis.Lord of Souls was released in 2011 as Keyes's second novel in hisThe Elder Scrolls book series.
![[icon]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=http%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aWiki_letter_w_cropped.svg) | This sectionneeds expansion. You can help byadding to it.(September 2012) |
In 2012,Complex rankedThe Elder Scrolls at number 20 on the list of the best video game franchises.[163] In 2013,The Elder Scrolls was voted as the Greatest Game Series of the Decade onGameSpot, beating out 64 other competitors.The Elder Scrolls reached the final round, beating theGrand Theft Auto series by a margin of 52.5% of the vote forThe Elder Scrolls to 47.5% forGrand Theft Auto.[164][165]
The fourth main game of the series,Oblivion, was initially released with a Teen rating by theESRB, but after reports that its developers failed to disclose content that would not be encountered through normal gameplay but would be inconsistent with that rating, the ESRB took a second look atOblivion that took the obscured content into consideration and in an unprecedented move that drew large public attention,raised the game's rating to Mature.[166]
In August 2011, Bethesda Softworks contacted the developer ofMinecraft,Mojang, claiming that the intended trademark of the titleScrolls for its new game breached Bethesda's trademark onThe Elder Scrolls.[167] On March 10, 2012,Markus Persson tweeted that the two had come to an agreement over the use of the name. The agreement prohibits Mojang from using the titleScrolls in any future sequels of the game.[168]
In May 2019, Bethesda Softworks released a promotional free tabletop role-playing game titledElsweyr. It was accused of being plagiarized as it shared a very similar plot to theDungeons & Dragons adventure "The Black Road", written by Paige Leitman and Ben Heisler, and contains reworded text that substitutes some words for synonyms.[169][170] After Leitman posted about the similarities onFacebook,[169] the game was removed from theirThe Elder Scrolls Online Facebook page.[171]
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