The Elder Scrolls 1: “Arena”
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 aficionados of pen-and-paper role-playing games, which greatly influenced the creation of the world of Tamriel. They were also fans of Looking Glass Studios‘ Ultima Underworld series, their main inspiration for Arena. Initially, Arena was not to be a role-playing game at all. The player, and a team of his fighters, would travel about a world fighting other teams in their arenas until the player became “grand champion” in the world’s capital, the Imperial City. 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. Role-playing game elements were added, as it expanded to include cities outside the arenas, and dungeons beyond the cities. Eventually it was decided to drop the idea of tournaments altogether, and focus on quests and dungeons, making the game a “full-blown [role-playing game]”. 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 as The Elder Scrolls: Arena. According to Peterson, “I think Vijay was the guy who tacked on the surtitle “The Elder Scrolls.” I don’t think he knew what the … it meant any more than we did, but the opening voice-over was [changed to “It has been foretold in the Elder Scrolls …” [Vijay Lakshman who then worked at Christopher Weaver’s Bethesda Softworks came up with the name of The Elder Scrolls, and the words eventually 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 in response, beginning: “It has been foretold in the Elder Scrolls …”
Bethesda missed their Christmas 1993 deadline. The game was released in the first quarter of 1994, “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. Despite some initial bugginess, and the formidable demands the game made on players’ machines, it became a cult hit. Evaluations of the game varied from “modest” to “wild”. Still, the game maintained traction with its audience. Game historian Matt Barton concluded that “the game set a new standard for this type of role-playing video game, and demonstrated just how much room was left for innovation.”
The Elder Scrolls 2: “Daggerfall”
Work on The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall began after Arena‘s release in March 1994. Ted Peterson was assigned the role of lead game designer. Daggerfall‘s plot was less clichéd than Arena‘s and involved a “complex series of adventures leading to multiple resolutions.” With Daggerfall, Arena‘s experience-point-based system was replaced with one rewarding the player for actually role-playing their character. Daggerfall came equipped with an improved character generation engine, one that included a GURPS-influenced class creation system, offering players the chance to create their own classes, and assign their own skills. Daggerfall was developed with an XnGine engine, one of the first truly 3D engines. Daggerfall realized a game world the size of Great Britain, filled with 15,000 towns and a population of 750,000. It was influenced by analog games and literature that Julian LeFay or Ted Peterson happened to be playing or reading at the time, such as Dumas‘s The Man in the Iron Mask and Vampire: The Masquerade. It was released on August 31, 1996. Like Arena, Daggerfall‘s initial release suffered from some bugs, leaving consumers disgruntled. These early anomalies were fixed in later versions. This experience led to a more prudent release schedule for future games.
The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind
The third title in The Elder Scrolls series was first conceived during the development of Daggerfall. 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. At publication, it covered the isle of Vvardenfell and allowed the player to join three of the Great Houses. The XnGine was scrapped and replaced with Numerical Design Limited’s Gamebryo, a Direct3D powered engine, with T&L capacity, 32-bit textures and skeletal animation. It was decided that the game world would be populated using the methods the team had developed in Redguard; with the game objects crafted by hand, rather than generated using the random algorithmic methods.
The project took “close to 100-man-years to create”. Bethesda tripled their staff and spent the first year developing The Elder Scrolls Construction Set. This allowed the game staff to easily balance the game and to modify it in small increments rather than large. Ted Peterson, who had left following the release of Daggerfall, returned to work as an author of in-game material, and as a general consultant on the lore-based aspects of the work. The PC version of Morrowind had gone gold by April 23, 2002, and was released on May 1 in North America, with the Xbox release set at June 7. On January 3, Bethesda announced that game publisher Ubisoft would take control of Morrowind‘s European distribution, in addition to those of eight other Bethesda games.
The expansion pack The Elder Scrolls III: Tribunal went gold on November 1 and was released, with little fanfare, on November 6. Tribunal puts the player in the self-contained, walled city of Mournhold, which can be teleported to and from Morrowind’s land mass. Development on the expansion began after Morrowind shipped, giving the developers a mere five-month development cycle to release the game. The prior existence of the Construction Set, however, meant that the team “already had the tools in place to add content and features very quickly.” Interface improvements, and specifically an overhaul of Morrowind‘s journal system, were among the key goals. Morrowind‘s second expansion, The Elder Scrolls III: Bloodmoon, went gold by May 23, and was released on June 6. It had been worked on since the release of Tribunal. In the expansion, the player travels to the frozen island of Solstheim and is asked to investigate the uneasiness of the soldiers stationed there.
The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion
Work on The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion began in 2002, after Morrowind‘s publication. Oblivion was developed by Bethesda Softworks, and the initial Xbox 360 and Personal computer (PC) releases were co-published by Bethesda and Take-Two Interactive subsidiary 2K Games. Oblivion was released on March 21, 2006. 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 on Oblivion focused on providing a tighter storyline, more developed characters, and to make information in the game world more accessible to players. Oblivion features improved AI, improved physics, and improved graphics. Bethesda developed and implemented procedural content creation tools in the creation of Oblivion‘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. Two downloadable expansion packs, Knights of the Nine and The Shivering Isles were released in 2006 and 2007, respectively. Knights of the Nine added a questline surrounding the search for a set of Crusader relics, while The Shivering Isles added the eponymous plane to the game.
The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim
In August 2010, Todd Howard revealed Bethesda was working on a game that had been in development since the release of Oblivion, and that progress was very far along. While the game was conceptualized after Oblivion‘s release, main development was restricted until after Fallout 3 was released. In November, Kristian West, then the editor-in-chief of Eurogamer‘s Danish outlet, reported overhearing a developer on a plane talking about the project; a new The Elder Scrolls game, although Bethesda did not comment on the report. At the Spike Video Game Awards in December, Todd Howard appeared on stage to unveil a teaser trailer and announce the title of the game.The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim was released on November 11, 2011 to widespread critical acclaim. It was awarded ‘Game of the Year’ by IGN, Spike and others. The game is set after the events of Oblivion, when the great dragon Alduin the World Eater returns to Skyrim; a beast whose existence threatens all life in Tamriel. Three pieces of DLC were released on PC and Xbox 360 in 2012 – Dawnguard, Hearthfire and Dragonborn, with a PlayStation 3 release in February 2013. Dawnguard added two joinable factions and an associated questline revolving around Vampires, while Hearthfire added more home customisation 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. On November 17, 2017, Skyrim – Virtual Reality was released for PlayStation 4. On June 10, 2018, Skyrim: Very Special Edition, a voice-activated text adventure game poking fun at the game’s many releases, was released for Amazon Alexa devices.
Elder Scrolls 