Elder Scrolls

The Elder Scrolls is Bethesda Game Studios’ open-world role-playing franchise, launching March 25, 1994, with Arena and growing into one of the most commercially successful and culturally influential RPG series in history. The franchise is defined by vast hand-crafted worlds, deep lore built across in-game books and centuries of fictional history, and a design philosophy that rewards exploration and player-driven story over linear progression. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim in November 2011 has sold over 60 million copies across its numerous re-releases and remains one of the best-selling games ever made. The Elder Scrolls VI has been in development at Bethesda since at least 2018 with no confirmed release date, with Todd Howard describing the game as still a long way off as recently as March 2026.

Arena and Daggerfall: The Origins

The Elder Scrolls: Arena released March 25, 1994, for MS-DOS, developed by Bethesda Softworks under the creative direction of Julian LeFay, Ted Peterson, and Vijay Lakshman. The game placed the player in the continent of Tamriel as the Champion of the realm, tasked with recovering the staff of Chaos from the Imperial Battlemage Jagar Tharn who had imprisoned Emperor Uriel Septim VII. Arena’s ambition exceeded its execution in several places, but it established the world of Tamriel, the province structure, the Elder Scrolls lore foundation, and the open-ended exploration that became the franchise’s identity. The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall in September 1996 was technically the most ambitious Elder Scrolls game ever made, generating a procedural world estimated at roughly 161,600 square kilometers and including numerous quest lines, guilds, and political factions across the provinces of High Rock and Hammerfell. Daggerfall’s scope remains unmatched in the series despite its roughness by contemporary standards.

Morrowind, Oblivion, and the Modern Era

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind released May 1, 2002, for PC and Xbox, directed by Todd Howard in the first mainline Elder Scrolls game under his creative leadership. Morrowind’s setting, the volcanic island of Vvardenfell in the province of Morrowind, was deliberately alien relative to the European fantasy settings most RPGs inhabited, with giant mushroom trees, insect-like constructs, and a complex political and religious situation the player arrived in as an outsider. The hand-crafted world design, deep written lore, and modding tools Bethesda released alongside the game established the franchise’s relationship with the PC modding community that has sustained it across every subsequent entry. Oblivion followed March 20, 2006, for PC, Xbox 360, and then in 2007 for PS3, set in the Imperial Province of Cyrodiil during a Daedric invasion that the player worked to prevent. Oblivion received strong critical reception and sold over 9.5 million copies. I stopped playing it after I broke the game and couldn’t advance anymore in my mission by killing everyone I could find with a magical stick and then couldn’t recharge the stick.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered, a full visual overhaul developed by Virtuos and shadow dropped during an Xbox showcase on April 22, 2025, arrived for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S, and PC to significant commercial and audience interest, demonstrating the original game’s enduring appeal.

Skyrim

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim released November 11, 2011, and is the franchise’s defining commercial achievement. The game placed the player as the Dragonborn, a warrior with the innate ability to absorb the souls of slain dragons and use their language as a magical weapon system called Shouts, in the Norse-inspired northern province of Skyrim during a civil war and a dragon resurgence prophesied to herald the return of the world-eating dragon Alduin. Skyrim has been released on every major gaming platform released since 2011, including multiple PC versions, PlayStation 3, 4, 5, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Xbox Series, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, and VR headsets. Its estimated sales exceed 60 million copies across all versions, making it one of the ten best-selling video games ever released. The game’s modding community has produced hundreds of thousands of modifications ranging from graphical enhancements to complete conversion projects, sustaining active player engagement across fifteen years.

The Elder Scrolls Online

The Elder Scrolls Online launched April 4, 2014, for PC and Mac, with console versions following in 2015, as a massively multiplayer online RPG set across all of Tamriel in the Second Era, centuries before the mainline games. The game launched to a mixed reception but improved significantly following the transition to a buy-to-play model in 2015, removing the monthly subscription requirement and making the base game a one-time purchase. Multiple major expansions including Morrowind, Summerset, Elsweyr, Greymoor, Blackwood, and High Isle have expanded the world substantially. The Elder Scrolls Online received major free content updates in 2026, maintaining its active playerbase alongside the anticipation for the next mainline entry.

The Elder Scrolls VI

Bethesda announced The Elder Scrolls VI with a brief teaser at E3 2018 showing a landscape and the series title, providing no gameplay, no setting detail, and no release information beyond confirmation that the game was coming. In the years since, Todd Howard has provided periodic updates without significant new details. Court documents from the FTC versus Microsoft case in 2023 listed 2026 as a tentative development estimate, a window that has since been confirmed unrealistic. Pete Hines described the game as in early development in August 2023. By March 2024 internal playtesting of early builds had begun. In July 2025, journalist Jez Corden reported the game was in a quite playable state internally. In November 2025, Howard described it as still a long way off while acknowledging the wait had been too long. The game did not appear at the Xbox Games Showcase in June 2026. Howard joked in March 2026 that he had never heard of the game, consistent with his stated preference for short marketing windows before launch. A release before 2028 is considered unlikely by most industry analysis. Platform details remain unconfirmed though the Xbox and PC availability is expected, with PlayStation availability uncertain.