50 Fun Facts About The Elder Scrolls

Which studio is the primary developer of the main Elder Scrolls games?

Bethesda Game Studios was spun out of publisher Bethesda Softworks in 2001 with roughly 40 staff; both sit under ZeniMax Media.

On which fictional continent are the Elder Scrolls games set?

The other three are real continents in the lore, but Tamriel's people know so little about them that they barely appear in the games.

In which year was the first game, The Elder Scrolls: Arena, released?

Arena missed its Christmas 1993 deadline and shipped in March 1994 with an initial distribution of only a few thousand units before word of mouth took over.

Daggerfall, the second game in the series, was released in which year?

It sold more than 100,000 copies in its first two days, wiping out retailer stock and forcing a smaller second printing four days after launch.

Morrowind's main story takes place on which island?

The game was originally planned to cover the entire province, but the scope was cut to this central island and three of the five Great Houses.

Which demigod, housed inside Red Mountain, is Morrowind's central antagonist?

IGN ranked him 90th on its 2010 list of the top 100 video game villains, a rare showing for a character who mostly talks before the final fight.

Morrowind was Bethesda's first major title on a console. Which one?

It was the best-selling RPG on that console in 2002 and stayed in its top ten a year after launch, a feat otherwise matched only by Halo.

The Bloodmoon expansion for Morrowind let players become what?

Catching the transformation disease from a beast in combat gives you three days to find a cure; after that, every night brings a forced change.

Oblivion takes place in which province of the Empire?

Todd Howard later admitted the capital province felt less distinctive than Morrowind, which pushed the team toward a more varied setting for Skyrim.

Which actor voiced Emperor Uriel Septim VII in Oblivion?

Sean Bean and Terence Stamp were also in the cast, while Max von Sydow would not join the series until Skyrim five years later.

Oblivion's first paid download in April 2006 became infamous. What was it?

Players liked the idea of small add-ons but balked at the price for cosmetic barding, and the episode is still shorthand for overpriced microtransactions.

On what date was The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim released?

The 11/11/11 launch shipped seven million units in its first week and was projected to bring in around US$450 million in that opening stretch.

What kind of title was The Elder Scrolls: Legends?

It used a two-lane board where one lane hid freshly played creatures from attacks, a twist that set it apart from Hearthstone.

Skyrim: Very Special Edition, a 2018 parody text adventure, ran on which device?

The E3 gag also promised versions for the Etch A Sketch, Motorola pagers and Samsung smart fridges, but the voice-assistant one actually existed.

The extinct Dwemer race is colloquially known by which name?

Despite the nickname and their underground metalwork, the Dwemer are classified as a kind of elf with startlingly advanced technology.

The Elder Scrolls continent sits on which planet?

Other continents on the planet include Akavir, Pyandonea, Yokuda and Atmora, but the games have so far stayed home.

Which Looking Glass series was the main inspiration for Arena?

The team also admired Legends of Valour, and designer Ted Peterson cheerfully called the result derivative, just much, much bigger.

In Arena, which Imperial Battlemage traps the Emperor and usurps his throne?

He stores his life force in the Jewel of Fire, so reassembling the Staff of Chaos alone is not enough to free the Emperor.

Daggerfall restricts travel to High Rock and which other province?

The two provinces meet at the Iliac Bay, and the map between them still held 15,000 places and a population of 750,000.

Daggerfall's game world was famously described as the size of which country?

That works out to roughly 209,331 square kilometres; a YouTube channel once walked across the whole map in 69 hours.

Redguard is the only Elder Scrolls game to feature what?

It also locked players into a named hero, Cyrus, rather than letting them build a character, which alienated fans of Daggerfall's freedom.

Who composed the music for Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim?

Skyrim's main theme was recorded with a choir of more than 30 singers performing in the fictional dragon language.

Which fanatical cult tries to open the gates to Oblivion in the fourth game?

Their leader Mankar Camoran retreats to a self-made realm called Paradise, where the player confronts him to recover the Amulet of Kings.

The Shivering Isles expansion is ruled by which Daedric Prince?

The Prince of Madness turns out to be the alter ego of Jyggalag, the Lord of Order, whose Greymarch threatens to wipe the realm clean.

The Elder Scrolls Online begins with the player imprisoned in which realm?

Starting as a prisoner is a series tradition; here the player is a soul shriven, a husk whose soul has already been taken.

Which Daedric Prince is the main antagonist of The Elder Scrolls Online's base story?

His scheme is to drag the entire mortal world into his own realm, and stopping it means uniting three alliances at war with each other.

Talos, the Ninth Divine, is the deified form of which emperor?

His apotheosis is disputed by the elven races, and the ban on his worship is a central grievance in Skyrim's civil war.

In 2011 Bethesda challenged Mojang's trademark on which game title?

The settlement let Mojang keep the name but barred using it for any sequel; the game was later relaunched as Caller's Bane.

Which engine did Bethesda license to replace XnGine for Morrowind?

The Direct3D engine brought 32-bit textures and skeletal animation, and Bethesda timed screenshot releases to NVIDIA's GeForce 4 launch to show off its water.

Which company co-published Oblivion's initial Xbox 360 and PC releases with Bethesda?

The Take-Two subsidiary also shared retail duties on the Shivering Isles expansion a year later.

Which Bethesda designer came up with the name "The Elder Scrolls"?

Peterson later joked that nobody on the team knew what it meant; the words were retrofitted as Tamriel's mystical tomes of past, present and future.

Daggerfall's plot centres on reviving which brass golem built by the Dwemer?

The Mantella is the key to powering it, and handing that key to different factions produces the game's six mutually exclusive endings.

Which Daedric Prince must the player defeat in Battlespire?

The same Prince of Destruction would return as the force behind the Oblivion Crisis a decade later in real-world time.

Redguard is set on which island?

The island sits off the Hammerfell coast, and the game's manual shipped with the first Pocket Guide to the Empire, a major piece of lore.

Who was the lead designer of Morrowind?

He admitted to starting Arena at least 20 times and escaping the opening dungeon only once, then went on to lead Oblivion's design as well.

The Knights of the Nine expansion pits the player against which sorcerer-king?

Released November 2006, it was the first of Oblivion's two expansions and came bundled into the PlayStation 3 version from day one.

In The Elder Scrolls Online, which animal represents the Daggerfall Covenant?

The eagle belongs to the Aldmeri Dominion and the dragon to the Ebonheart Pact; the Covenant unites Bretons, Redguards and Orcs under High King Emeric.

Which YouTuber was promised an NPC role in The Elder Scrolls VI after a fan petition?

Known as Skyrim Grandma, she was in her eighties when Bethesda made the promise in March 2019, years before the game had even entered full production.

Who wrote The Infernal City, the first Elder Scrolls novel?

The 2009 book follows a flying city called Umbriel arriving over Black Marsh some 40 years after the Oblivion Crisis.

What was Todd Howard's first assignment after joining Bethesda in 1994?

He had been turned away twice before being hired, and would not lead a project until Redguard in 1998.

The series' fictional cosmology draws inspiration from which religious tradition?

One creation myth holds that some gods were tricked into making the mortal world and lost part of their power, becoming the Aedra.

Which publisher took over Morrowind's European distribution in 2002?

The deal covered eight other Bethesda games too, and Europe got a semi-localised version in May before a fully translated one in August.

What was Daggerfall's original working title?

The game was first set in Morrowind before moving northwest; that discarded city finally appeared as the setting of the Tribunal expansion.

Bethesda's parent company sued which two US senators for libel over Daggerfall?

The senators dismissed the suit as a publicity stunt timed to boost the game's holiday sales.

Battlespire's co-operative multiplayer supported up to how many players?

It was the only Elder Scrolls title with multiplayer at all until The Elder Scrolls Online arrived in 2014.

Who directed The Elder Scrolls Online at ZeniMax Online Studios?

The studio was formed in 2007 and spent seven years on the MMO before launch, licensing HeroEngine as a whiteboard for early design.

Which studio originally developed The Elder Scrolls: Legends?

Bethesda handed the game to Sparkypants in 2018, halted development in 2019 and finally shut the servers down in January 2025.

Which studio made The Elder Scrolls Travels games for early mobile phones?

The line ran from Stormhold and Dawnstar in 2003 to Oblivion Mobile in 2006, plus a PSP Oblivion that was never released.

What was the title of the second Elder Scrolls novel, published in 2011?

It concluded the two-book story that began with The Infernal City and the flying city menacing Black Marsh.

Bethesda's 2019 promo tabletop RPG Elsweyr was accused of copying which D&D adventure?

After one of the adventure's authors pointed out the reworded text on Facebook, Bethesda pulled the free game from its ESO page.