Bethesda Softworks
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50 free Bethesda Softworks trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Bethesda Softworks began as a small experiment in the 1980s and grew into the publisher behind some of the most-played role-playing games ever made. Along the way it picked fights in court, rescued a beloved post-apocalyptic series from a collapsing rival, and gathered a family of studios on both sides of the Atlantic. This quiz covers the whole story: the company's early years of sports games and film tie-ins, the provinces, races and villains of The Elder Scrolls, the wasteland lore of Fallout, and the shooters and stealth games made by its sister studios, from Doom and Wolfenstein to Dishonored and Prey. Expect questions on celebrity voice casts, infamous controversies and the people who built it all. It is pitched for anyone who has lost a weekend to Skyrim or Fallout, with easier openers for casual players and a few deep cuts for lore hunters and trivia night regulars.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Friends star worked briefly at Bethesda Softworks in the 1980s, before the sitcom made its cast famous?
Courteney Cox
Courteney Cox worked at the publisher for a short spell in the 1980s, when it was a small start-up begun on a kitchen table. She found fame as Monica Geller in Friends in the 1990s.
Q 02Bethesda took the studio behind which hit game to court in 2011 over a card game called Scrolls?
Minecraft
Minecraft maker Mojang was sued because Bethesda argued the name Scrolls sat too close to its Elder Scrolls trademark. The two sides settled in 2012: Mojang kept the name but agreed not to trademark it.
Q 03Which film star voiced James, the scientist father who vanishes at the start of Bethesda's Fallout 3?
Liam Neeson
Liam Neeson played the father whose unexplained disappearance sends the player out into the wasteland. Bethesda also hired Malcolm McDowell, as the scheming President Eden.
Q 04Which Star Trek actor voiced Emperor Uriel Septim VII, who dies early in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion?
Patrick Stewart
Patrick Stewart recorded the doomed emperor, who is on the run from assassins who have already murdered his three sons. His death in the opening minutes sets the whole story moving.
Q 05Bethesda Softworks is named after the town where it was founded in 1986, in which US state?
Maryland
Maryland's Bethesda is where the founder set the company up at his kitchen table. It moved to nearby Rockville in 1990 but kept the old town's name.
Q 06Which cosmetic add-on for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion drew complaints in 2006 as poor value for money?
Horse armor
Horse armor was the first paid download for Oblivion, released in April 2006. Players liked the idea of small add-ons but balked at paying for something so minor.
Q 07What everyday item do survivors use as money across the wasteland in Bethesda's Fallout games?
Bottle caps
Bottle caps serve as the wasteland's everyday currency, though plenty of trade is still done by straight barter. Even the mobile spin-off Fallout Shelter pays its players in them.
Q 08On which fictional continent are Bethesda's Elder Scrolls games, from Arena to Skyrim, all set?
Tamriel
Tamriel is divided into nine provinces, each dominated by a different race, and sits on a planet called Nirn. Arena let players roam the whole continent, while later games zoom in on one region.
Q 09Which actor plays the mutated bounty hunter known as The Ghoul in Amazon's Fallout television series?
Walton Goggins
Walton Goggins plays the gunslinger, who was a Hollywood actor before the bombs fell and he mutated into a ghoul. The show tells an original story rather than adapting any one of the games.
Q 10Which game director at Bethesda Game Studios led development of Fallout 3, Skyrim and Fallout 4?
Todd Howard
Todd Howard was recruited as a producer in 1994 and rose to become director and executive producer of the in-house studio. His first credits were on the company's 1990s movie tie-ins.
Q 11Which former technology forecaster at the ABC television network founded Bethesda Softworks in 1986?
Christopher Weaver
Christopher Weaver started the firm as an experiment to see whether PC games could pay, funding it himself with roughly $100,000. He had no interest in football, the subject of its first release.
Q 12Which holding company was formed in 1999 as the parent of Bethesda Softworks?
ZeniMax Media
ZeniMax Media was set up by Bethesda's founder and the lawyer Robert Altman. It later bought studios such as id Software and Arkane, whose games Bethesda publishes.
Q 13Bethesda sued which publisher in 1988, claiming Gridiron! features were reused in John Madden Football?
Electronic Arts
Q 21Fallout 4's wasteland, known as the Commonwealth, covers the ruins of which American city and its surroundings?
Boston
Boston and the countryside around it form the map, a setting rumoured for some time before the first trailer confirmed it. Fallout 4 was also the first entry with a fully voiced player character.
Q 22Fallout 76, Bethesda's first online multiplayer Fallout, is set in the Appalachian hills of which US state?
West Virginia
West Virginia's real towns, such as Charleston and Morgantown, appear on the map, and local folklore supplies monsters like the Mothman. Players emerge 25 years after the bombs fell.
Q 23Which fictional corporation designed the underground shelters where Bethesda's Fallout heroes usually begin?
Vault-Tec
Electronic Arts had hired Bethesda to help finish the first Madden and held distribution rights to Gridiron!. The $7.3 million suit was resolved out of court.
Q 14Bethesda bought the Fallout rights from which struggling publisher, the franchise's original home in the 1990s?
Interplay
Interplay was facing bankruptcy when it sold the series, having scrapped its own third instalment. Bethesda's in-house team built a new Fallout 3 from scratch.
Q 15Which studio, co-founded by veterans of Fallout's original publisher, developed Fallout: New Vegas for Bethesda?
Obsidian
Obsidian used the 2010 spin-off to build on ideas from Fallout 2, such as the New California Republic. Its Las Vegas setting was chosen because it evoked 1950s imagery.
Q 16Which Resident Evil creator founded Tango Gameworks, the Tokyo studio behind Bethesda's The Evil Within?
Shinji Mikami
Shinji Mikami left Capcom and set the studio up in March 2010 with a team of twelve. It hit money trouble within months and was bought by Bethesda's parent that October.
Q 17Bethesda's parent bought Doom creator id Software in 2009; in which US state is that studio based?
Texas
Texas has been home to id Software since 1992, first in Mesquite and now in Richardson. The 2009 sale put Doom, Quake and Rage under the Bethesda label.
Q 18Which French city is home to Arkane Studios, the Bethesda team behind Dishonored and Deathloop?
Lyon
Lyon is where Arkane was established in October 1999 by eleven founders. Its first release, Arx Fatalis, followed in 2002, a decade before Dishonored made its name.
Q 19MachineGames, the Bethesda studio behind Wolfenstein: The New Order, is based in which European country?
Sweden
Sweden is home to MachineGames, founded in Uppsala in 2009 by seven former Starbreeze Studios developers. They went on to revive Wolfenstein for a new generation.
Q 20Bethesda's writers set Fallout 3 in the ruins of which American city, on the principle of writing what you know?
Washington
Washington was picked because the studio's offices sat only a short drive away. The ruined capital and the land around it are known in Fallout 3 as the Capital Wasteland.
Vault-Tec pitched its bunkers as public shelters, each able to hold up to a thousand people. Its cheerful cartoon mascot still grins from posters and products all over the wasteland.
Q 24What is the name of the wrist-worn computer that Bethesda's Fallout players use to check maps, items and stats?
Pip-Boy
Pip-Boy stands for Personal Information Processor, and in Bethesda's Fallout games the gadget doubles as the menu screen. It has become one of the defining symbols of the franchise.
Q 25Which companion, inspired by a character in Mad Max 2, joins the player in several Fallout games?
Dogmeat
Dogmeat first turns up as an optional companion in the original Fallout, and dogs of the same name return in Fallout 3 and Fallout 4. Bethesda modelled its Fallout 3 version on a Blue Heeler to match the film.
Q 26Which 2023 space role-playing game was Bethesda Game Studios's first new universe in more than 25 years?
Starfield
Starfield casts the player as a space miner recruited by Constellation, a famed group of explorers chasing mysterious Artifacts. Its director summed up the pitch as Skyrim in space.
Q 27Bethesda's 2016 reboot of Doom opens in an energy-mining facility overrun by demons on which planet?
Mars
Mars is where the Union Aerospace Corporation runs a plant that taps energy seeping out of Hell. The player, an ancient warrior nicknamed the Doom Slayer, fights through it and into Hell itself.
Q 28In the alternate history of Bethesda's Fallout games, the US fought its devastating nuclear war against which country?
China
China and the United States destroyed each other after years of clashes over scarce energy. The games follow the descendants of the survivors, generations after the missiles flew.
Q 29Which militaristic order, devoted to collecting and preserving old technology, helps the hero in Bethesda's Fallout 3?
Brotherhood of Steel
Brotherhood of Steel soldiers storm the Jefferson Memorial in the finale alongside Liberty Prime, a giant pre-war military robot. The order also gave its name to two earlier Fallout spin-offs.
Q 30In Bethesda's Elder Scrolls lore, the province of Skyrim is the homeland of which human race?
Nords
Nords see Skyrim as their homeland, though orcs and other peoples have settled there too. They also worship a ninth god that most of the continent leaves out of its pantheon of eight.