Summary
The massively popular game series,The Elder Scrolls,began in 1994 withThe Elder Scrolls: Arena, and the first game in the series bares a striking resemblance to many of the sequels that followed. Players enter a fantasy world and roleplay a character of their choosing, attempting to save the realm from evil by using melee attacks, archery, or magic. In essence, the system and game aesthetic was very similar to other medieval fantasy role-playinggames likeDungeons & Dragons.However, this first game was a randomly generated series of infinite encounters that took place across the entire region of Tamriel, rather than selecting just one part of the region to explore, like the later games did.
While there are still a lot of similarities betweenArenaand the laterElder Scrollsgames, much has changed over the years. ThoughArenainitially debuted on MS-DOS, every subsequent game in the franchise has done something to improve on the core concept of the series, taking thelessons learned from its previous entriesto consistently make the bestElder Scrollsgame yet.
The Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfallcame out just two years after the series' first game, and was once again an exclusive for the MS-DOS. In many ways, the gameplay in this version is largely the same as what came before.Daggerfallis a large open world fantasy RPGwith randomly generated cities and dungeons. However, this game takes place in Lilac Bay instead of all of Tamriel. As players will see, Bethesda Software were already expanding the lore of this fictional world in this sequel.
That isn’t all that changed between the first twoElder Scrollsgames, though, asDaggerfallmassively improved the character creation model for the franchise in this entry. The player still got to pick between eight playable races, and gender still provided bonuses in this early model. For instance, a Nord male would receive +10 to Strength, while a Nord female would gain +10 to Luck. However, rather than being assigned a set class, players could now create their own class by picking from a list of skills that matches their desired play style. Of course, this addition greatly improved character customization, and is a feature that stayed with the series until the fourth installment.
The third game in theElder Scrollsseries,Morrowind, was a risky endeavor for Bethesda at the time of release. Coming outeight years after its predecessor,they struggled to bringThe Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowindinto fruition due to financial difficulties. However, the studio decided to put everything they had into their next game, and let their hard work decide the fate of the series. Once again,Morrowindis a fantasy RPGthat takes place in the fictional realm of Tamriel, only this time, a lot of the themes and world design lean into more steampunk tropes to highlight the unique region of Morrowind, where players will spend all their time in this game. As players probably already know, this is when Bethesda started to begin solidifying their idea of what futureThe Elder Scrollsgames would look like.
However, the biggest change in this game is that the world is no longer a randomly generated set of pixels. Instead, Morrowind is a fully-rendered 3D setting, allowingMorrowindto be released on Xbox shortly after its initial PC launch in 2002. This 3D world also loosened the games' focus on the main plot. This game offers many more side quests and options for players in its open world. As a result,Morrowindleaned more into the freedom that an open-world video game can provide, and influenced many other future games as a result.
The Elder Scrollsseries had reached a new high withThe Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind,with this game selling upward of 200,000 copies in its first year.Bethesda weren’t ready to rest on their laurelsthough, and they quickly got to work on the next game in the franchise.The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivionis instantly recognized as looking graphically better than all of its predecessors, as it was released with the intention of reaching a more mainstream audience in 2006 by launching on PC, Xbox 360, and PS3 simultaneously.
The new graphics engine wasn’t the only huge improvement over the previous game, however.Oblivionwas also the first game inThe Elder Scrollsseries to include voice acting in the game. Now, players could listen and respond to NPCs in the open world, rather than scrolling through several silent text boxes. Such an addition added more life to this series, and that was only improved with the addition of Radiant AI. This new AI system was developed by Bethesda, and it allowed NPCs to make decisions on their own and interact with objects in the open world in a way that the player character would. This innovation did lead to some odd conversations and behaviors, but it wouldn’t feel likeOblivionwithout theseerratic NPC decisions.
With the success ofThe Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivionbeing released on consoles, Bethesda were ready to take the series into the mainstream with their nextElder Scrollsgame. That is whyThe Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrimis such a departure from what the other games had done before. Taking place exclusively in the northern region of Skyrim, this fifth game is still an open-world fantasy RPG. However,Skyrimleaned more into the action-adventure genre, rather than being a cut-and-dry RPG. This is because players do not pick a skill tree or class structure to follow during character creation. Instead, they level up their skills and abilities by performing certain related actions in the game. Using one-handed weapons would improve their One-Handed skills, for example. Plus, the open world offered more freedom than ever before.
While most players would assumethe addition of dragonsis the biggest improvement thatSkyrimbrought to the series, it cannot be understated how vital the enemy scaling is in this game. Rather than leveling up enemies in the game alongside the player to maintain the game’s difficulty, the enemies inSkyrimwill always stay at the same level. For example, the bandits in the cave outside Whiterun will remain at Level 2 no matter how strong the player gets. However, these types of enemies are less likely to spawn as a random encounter, and higher level enemies will take their place in the open world. As a result, this world feels more realistic, while also still providing a challenge for long-term players. Let’s hope this system stays whenThe Elder Scrolls 6finally releases.
