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The development history of The Elder Scrolls series began in 1992, when the staff of Bethesda Softworks, which had until then been a predominantly sports game-producing company, decided to shift the focus of their upcoming Arena from arena combat into role-playing. The team, pulling influences from Ultima Underworld and Dungeons & Dragons, released the massive, open, but ultimately derivative, first-person RPG The Elder Scrolls: Arena in 1994 for DOS PC systems. The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall, the next series game, was published in 1996. Fuelled by the modest success of Arena, Daggerfall attempted to create a game world twice the size of Great Britain, rendered in a truly 3D engine, and build a skill-system that revolved around skill building rather than experience gains. Daggerfall suffered from that very ambition: Daggerfall, rushed to publication, was found tortuously buggy, and prohibitively hardware-intensive.

Following Daggerfall's release, Bethesda ceased any development on any numbered series title until 1998, developing in the interim The Elder Scrolls Legends: Battlespire, released in 1997, and The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard, released in 1998. Both games had a smaller focus than the numbered series titles: Battlespire limited itself to dungeon-romping; Redguard was a linear third-person action-adventure game. The release of Morrowind in 2002 saw a return to the old-style expansive and non-linear gameplay, and a shift towards individually detailed landscapes and items, with a smaller game-world than past titles. Morrowind was released on both the Xbox and the PC, and saw popular and critical success on both, selling upwards of 4 million units by mid 2005.

Work began on The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion in 2002, immediately after Morrowind's publication. Oblivion focused on providing a tighter storyline, improved AI, improved physics, and impressive graphics. The game was released on the PC and Xbox 360 in early 2006, and the PS3 in early 2007. Further content was distributed over Xbox Live and the Internet through micropayments. Bethesda released two expansion packs for Oblivion in late 2006 and early 2007: The Elder Scrolls IV: Knights of the Nine, which included all previously-released micro-content releases, and The Elder Scrolls IV: Shivering Isles.

Arena (1992–1994)

File:Arena promo screenshot.jpg
A first-person screenshot from Arena, demonstrating the then-impressive graphical capabilities.
See also: The Elder Scrolls: Arena

Background

Prior to working on the Elder Scrolls series, Bethesda worked predominantly with sports games. In the six years from their founding to Arena's release, in 1992, Bethesda had released ten games, six of them sports games[1]—games with such titles as Hockey League Simulator, NCAA Basketball: Road To The Final Four ('91/'92 Edition), and Wayne Gretzky Hockey[2]—and the remaining four adaptations from other media[1]—adaptations predominantly from the Terminator series.[2]

Bethesda's history as a sport and port game developer did not help it when it began its first action-RPG venture. Designer Ted Peterson recalls the experience: "I remember talking to the guys at SirTech who were doing Wizardry: Crusaders of the Dark Savant at the time, and them literally laughing at us for thinking we could do it."[3] Ted Peterson worked alongside Vijay Lakshman as one of the two designers of what was then simply Arena, a "medieval-style gladiator game".[3][4]

Staff

Peterson, Lakshman and Julian LeFay were those who, in Peterson's opinion, "really spear-headed the initial development of the series".[3] Game journalist Joe Blancato, however, credits company co-founder Chris Weaver with the development: "If Weaver had a baby, Arena was it, and it showed." During the development of Arena, Todd Howard, later Executive Producer of Oblivion, joined Bethesda, testing the CD-ROM version of Arena as his first assignment.[1] Ted Peterson had joined the company in 1992, working assignments on Terminator: 2029, Terminator Rampage, and Terminator Future Shock, as well as other "fairly forgettable titles".[3]

Influences

Peterson, Lakshman and LeFay were longtime aficionados of pencil and paper role-playing games,[3] and it in from these games that the world of Tamriel was created.[4] They were also fans of Looking Glass Studios' Ultima Underworld series, which became their main inspiration for Arena.[3]

The influence of Legends of Valour, a game Ted Peterson describes as a "free-form first-person perspective game that took place in a single city", has also been noted.[3][4] Peterson, asked for his overall comment on the game, replied "It was certainly derivative...". Aside from the fact that Bethesda had made Arena "Much, much bigger" than other titles on the market, Peterson held that the team "[wasn't] doing anything too new" in Arena.[3]

Design goals

Initially, Arena was not to be an RPG 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.[4] 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.[3] RPG elements were added to the game, as the game expanded to include the cities outside the arenas, and dungeons beyond the cities.[4] Eventually it was decided to drop the idea of tournaments altogether, and focus on quests and dungeons,[3] on making the game a "full-blown RPG".[4]

The original concept of arena combat had never made it to the coding stage, and so few artefacts from that era of development remain: the game's title, and a text file with the names of fighting teams from every large city in Tamriel, and a brief introduction for them.[5] The concept of traveling teams was eventually left aside as well, because the team's decision to produce a first-person RPG had made the system somewhat less fun.[4]

Although the team had dropped all arena combat from the end game, because all the material had already been printed up with the title, the game went to market as The Elder Scrolls: Arena. The team retconned the idea that, because the Empire of Tamriel was so violent, it had been nicknamed the Arena. The title remained awkward. It was Lakshman who came up with the idea of "The Elder Scrolls", and though, in the words of Ted Peterson, "I don't think he knew what the hell it meant any more than we did",[3] the words eventually came to mean "Tamriel's mystical tomes of knowledge that told of its past, present, and future."[4] The game's initial voice-over was changed in response, beginning: "It has been foretold in the Elder Scrolls ..."[3]

Release and impact

The game's release was disastrous. Bethesda missed their Christmas 1993 deadline, and was forced to release the game in the "doldrums" of March 1994, "really serious for a small developer/publisher like Bethesda Softworks." The misleading packaging further contributed to distributor distaste for the game, leading to an initial distribution of only 3,000 units—a smaller number even, recalls Peterson, than the sales for his Terminator: 2029 add-on. "We were sure we had screwed the company and we'd go out of business." Nonetheless, sales continued, month after month, as news of the game was passed on by word-of-mouth.[3]

Soon, despite harsh reviews, general bugginess,[3] and the formidable demands the game made on player's machines,[6] the game became a cult hit.[1] Evaluations of the game's success vary from "minor"[3] to "modest"[6] to "wild",[1] but are unvarying in presenting the game as a success. Game historian Matt Barton concludes that, in any case, "the game set a new standard for this type of CRPG, and demonstrated just how much room was left for innovation."[6]

Daggerfall (1994–1996)

A first-person screenshot from Daggerfall, demonstrating the user interface and graphical capabilities of the game.
See also: The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall

Design goals

Work on The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall began immediately after Arena's release in March 1994.[7] Ted Peterson was assigned the role of Lead Game Designer.[3] Originally titled Mournhold and set in Morrowind, the game was eventually relocated to the provinces of High Rock and Hammerfell. Daggerfall's plot was opened up beyond Arena's clichéd and linear "find the eight missing pieces of the "Staff of Chaos" and use it to rescue the Emperor from a dimensional prison",[6] and, said Ted Peterson, "that most cliched of all role-playing conventions, slaying the wicked wizard", to a "complex series of adventures leading to multiple resolutions".[3]

With Daggerfall, Arena's experience-point based system was replaced with one that rewarded the player for actually role-playing their character.[7] Daggerfall came equipped with an improved character generation engine, one that included not only Arena's basic class choices, but also a GURPS-influenced class creation system, offering players the chance to create their own classes, and assign their own skills.[8][3] Daggerfall was initially developed with an updated 2.5D raycast engine, like Doom's, but it was eventually dropped in favor of XnGine, one of the first truly 3D engines. Daggerfall realized a gameworld twice the size of Great Britain,[7] filled with 15,000 towns and a population of 750,000.[1]

Influences

Daggerfall, in Peterson's opinion, was little-influenced by contemporary video games, as they simply "weren't very interesting". "I can remember playing the latest King's Quest, Doom, and Sam and Max Hit the Road while working on it, but I can't say they had any profound impact on the story or design." Daggerfall's most profound influences came from whatever analog games and literature Julian LeFay or Ted Peterson happened to be playing or reading at the time, such as Dumas's The Man in the Iron Mask, which influenced "the quest where the player had to find the missing Prince of Sentinel", and Vampire: The Masquerade, which influenced "the idea of vampire tribes throughout the region".[3]

Release

Daggerfall was released on August 31 1996,[9] within the game's intended release window.[10] Like that of Arena, Daggerfall's release suffered from buggy code. It was patchable code, however, a fact that nonetheless left consumers disgruntled.[6] The yearning to avoid what were, in LeFay's words, "all the stupid patches we had for Daggerfall" led to a more cautious release schedule in the future.[11]

Battlespire and Redguard (1996–1998)

See also: The Elder Scrolls Legends: Battlespire and The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard

Battlespire

Following the release of Daggerfall, work began on three separate projects all at once: Battlespire, Redguard, and Morrowind, for it had become clear that the gaming audience hungered for more games, more often. Battlespire, originally titled Dungeon of Daggerfall: Battlespire, was the first of the three to be released,[12] on November 30 1997.[13]

Originally designed as an expansion pack for Daggerfall, Battlespire focused on what Bethesda has since called "the best part of Daggerfall": dungeon romping. Battlespire would be smaller in scope than previous titles and would feature "intense level design". It was also to offer multiplayer gaming,—player versus player deathmatch, as it were—the only series title to do so, as of 2007. Later in development, Morrowind was put on hold, and its staff transfered over to Battlespire and Redguard. Battlespire was repackaged as a stand-alone game, and sold as An Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire.[12]

Redguard

Redguard was the second of the three titles to be released, on October 31 1998.[14] With the inspiration of Tomb Raider, Prince of Persia, and the Ultima series, Bethesda was to create a new series of pure action-adventure games under the Elder Scrolls Adventures label. Players would talk to NPCs through keywords, use items to solve puzzles, and follow an "epic" storyline, all the while moving through dungeons, swordfights and chasms.[15]

With Redguard, the team focused its art time on achieving great detail in one particular area with the XnGine, creating the real-time 3D environments of the island and town of Stros M'kai. Redguard did not offer the player the chance to create their own character. Instead, players would play the prefabricated "Cyrus the Redguard".[15]

Impact

Both games were failures with the gaming public. Players used to the vast open spaces of Daggerfall did not take well to the reduced worlds of Redguard and Battlespire. There was a downturn in sales in The Elder Scrolls franchise and elsewhere, and Bethesda flirted with bankruptcy. Asked if he had ever been worried, Howard replied: "Oh, sure. Over my 13 years here, that's a long time, you're going to have bumps. The years immediately following Daggerfall were probably the worst. We made some bad decisions and some bad games."[1]

Morrowind (1998–2003)

See also: The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, The Elder Scrolls III: Tribunal, and The Elder Scrolls III: Bloodmoon

Early design goals

A third title in the Elder Scrolls series was first conceived during the development of Daggerfall, though it was originally to be set in the Summerset Isles and called Tribunal. Following the release of Daggerfall, it was set up around an SVGA version of XnGine, which Bethesda later used in Battlespire, and set in the province of Morrowind.[16]

The concept was "much closer to Daggerfall in scope", than the finished product, encompassing the whole province of Morrowind, rather than the isle of Vvardenfell, and allowing the player to join all five Dunmer Great Houses, rather than the three available in publication. The blight was conceived as a dynamic force, progressively expanding and destroying cities in its wake. It was eventually decided that the scope of the original design was too grand given the technology current at the time.[16] According to designer Ken Rolston, something was said approximating "We’re not ready for it, we don’t want to jump into this and fail".[17] The project was put on hold in 1997, as Bethesda went on to develop Redguard and Battlespire,[16] though the project remained in the back of the developers minds throughout this period.[17]

A third-person screenshot from the game, demonstrating Morrowind's then-advanced graphics: Pixel Shaded water, long render distances, and detailed textures and models.

The completion of Redguard in 1998 led to a return to the Morrowind project, as the developers felt a yearning in their audience to return to the classically epic forms of the earlier titles. Finding that the gaps between their own technical capacities and those of rival companies had grown in the interim, Bethesda sought to revitalize itself and return to the forefront of the industry,[16] an effort spearheaded by project leader Todd Howard.[18]

Later design goals

XnGine was scrapped and replaced with a Direct3D powered engine, with T&L capacity,[17] 32-bit textures and skeletal animation.[19] During their promotional campaign, Bethesda deliberately paralleled their screenshot releases with the announcement of NVIDIA's GeForce 4, as "being indicative of the outstanding water effects the technology is capable of".[20]

The scale of the game was much reduced from the earlier concept, focusing primarily on Dagoth Ur and a smaller area of land. It was decided that the game world would be populated using the methods the team had developed in Redguard; that is, the game objects would crafted by hand, rather than generated using the random algorithmic methods of Arena and Daggerfall. By 2000, Morrowind was to be unequivocally a single-player game, with no chance of multiplayer extension. In the words of Pete Hines, Bethesda's Director of Marketing and PR: "No. Not on release, not three months after, no no no."[21]

Staff

The project, despite the reduced scale, became a massive investment. According to the team's reasonings, the endeavor took "close to 100 man-years to create". To accomplish this feat, Bethesda tripled their staff and spent their first year of development on The Elder Scrolls Construction Set, allowing the game staff to easily balance the game and to modify it in small increments rather than large.[16] According to project leader Todd Howard, the Construction Set came as the result of a communal yearning to develop a "role-playing operating system", capable of extension and modification, rather than a particular type of game.[22]

Despite the increase in staff, Rolston still felt that the game had few designers, in contrast to the multitudes employed in the production of Oblivion.[23] 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. "Ken Rolston and Todd Howard have a very firm grasp on all the game aspects of the world, but sometimes they like to have someone to bounce ideas off of, usually about real minutiae of the world."[24]

Promotion and release

Morrowind had an impressive showing at E3 2001,[25] demonstrating a beta build to the public. The same beta build was demonstrated to the staff of PC Gamer for another preview, and was kept around the office as late as June 19 as the subject of later previews, while another test build was developed alongside.[26]

On May 5 2001, Bethesda announced the development of an additional Morrowind release for Microsoft's Xbox. The project was, according to the same release, something that Bethesda had been working on with Microsoft since they had first known of the console.[27]

In May 2000, Bethesda set the first expected PC release date in late 2001.[28] Later order forms, such as those by Electronics Boutique, set the date in November. On October 10 2001, GameSpot reported that Morrowind's release date had been set back to March 2002.[29] On October 12, a press release from Bethesda gave the date of "Spring 2002",[30] confirming GameSpot's supposition of delay without agreeing on the more specific date of "March".[31] Though no rationale behind the delay was given at the time, developer Pete Hines later attributed the delay to a need for game testing and balancing.[32]

Although the PC version of Morrowind had gone gold by April 23 2002,[33] and was released on May 1 in North America,[34] the Xbox release was delayed further. On April 15, GameSpot suggested a Xbox release date sometime in May and a scheduled "going gold" date for the Xbox version in the first week of the same month.[35] In contradiction of the GameSpot supposition, a June 4 Bethesda press release set June 7 as the Xbox release date.[36]

On January 3, Bethesda announced that game publisher Ubi Soft would take control of Morrowind's European distribution, in addition to those of eight other Bethesda games.[37] Under Ubi Soft's supervision, Morrowind's European release took place in two stages: releasing a "semilocalized" version of the game, translating only the manual while leaving the game text in English, in May; and a fully localized version of the game in August. Ubi Soft group brand manager Thomas Petersen described the difficulties of translating a "universe featuring more than a million words" as "quite a task".[38]

Strategy guide

In a break from standard industry practice, Bethesda decided to publish their strategy guide in-house, rather than contracting it out to a third party publisher like BradyGames or Prima Games. The decision resulted from a belief among Bethesda staff that they believed in and understood Morrowind more than any external agency, and deserved more royalties than were commonly rewarded. Bethesda Peter Olafson, a noted games journalist and friend of the company, and began work on the guide in January 2002, four months before release.[39]

The resulting product, Morrowind Prophecies Strategy Guide, sold over 200,000 copies as of September 24 2003. Although the royalties from most third-party game publishers approach 25% to 30% only infrequently, Bethesda managed a 70% profit margin on their own.[39] Despite this success, Bethesda decided to allow Prima Games to publish the "official" game guide for the release of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.[40]

Tribunal

The Elder Scrolls III: Tribunal, announced on September 2 2002 and scheduled for a PC-only release,[41] went gold on November 1[42] and was released, with little fanfare,[43] on November 6.[44] Tribunal puts the player in the self-contained, walled city of Mournhold, an enclave within Morrowind's provincial capital of Almalexia; the new city is not connected to Morrowind's land mass, Vvardenfell, and the player must teleport to it. The storyline continues the story of the Tribunal deities.[41]

The choice to produce the expansion was primarily inspired by the success of Morrowind's release, as well as a general feeling that Elder Scrolls series games are ongoing experiences, that merit new things for their players to do.[45] Development on the game began immediately after Morrowind shipped, giving the developers a mere five-month development cycle to release the game—a very fast cycle for the industry. 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".[46] Interface improvements, and specifically an overhaul of Morrowind's journal system, were among the key goals for Tribunal's release. The new journal allowed the player to sort quests individually and by completion, reducing the confusion caused by the original's jumbling together of every quest into a single chronological stream.[46][47]

Bloodmoon

Morrowind's second expansion, The Elder Scrolls III: Bloodmoon, announced on February 14 2003 and scheduled for release in May of the same year,[48] went gold by May 23,[49] and was released on June 6.[50] It had been worked on since the release of Tribunal in November 2002.[51]

Oblivion (2002–2007)

See also: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Main article: Development of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

The first rumors of another Elder Scrolls release after The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind began to circulate in June 2004,[52] and were confirmed on September 10 2004, when Bethesda officially announced the identity of the game in question: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.[53][54] As of the announcement, Bethesda had been working on Oblivion for 2 years, since 2002,[54] just as Bethesda was finishing up with Morrowind.[55] In the same timeframe, Bethesda's Elder Scrolls team was split in two: half, mostly designers and artists, were sent to work on Morrowind's expansions; and the rest, mostly programmers, were sent to work on technology for Oblivion.[56]

Design goals

Producing for next generation machines, rather than a cheap upgrade, gave Bethesda an additional four years of development: four years that "all but guaranteed" a punctual launch alongside the Xbox 360, four years that offered room for Bethesda to start from scratch.[1] Howard describes this as an aspect of Bethesda's greater goal of "Reinvention", where the team's goal is to make "a new game that stands on its own, that has its own identity".[56]

Keeping with the spirit of past games, Howard promised to keep with the spirit of "big-world, do-anything"-style games, thinking that a certain size and number of choices were needed to make role-playing feel "meaningful";[57] but now there was to be greater emphasis on keeping the game focused.[56] Vice president of Public relations and Marketing for Bethesda Pete Hines saw the developments between games as less an issue of design focus and more as a "natural side effect of improving and refining how the game works".[58]

Oblivion would include fewer NPCs and quests than Morrowind, and mindless filler, which Howard felt the team had been guilty of in the past, would be avoided.[56] In exchange, Producer Gavin Carter later explained, there would be greater focus on length and depth in the quests. The new quests would be "much more complex", much more "rich"; they would be quests "with more alternate paths, more chararcters [sic] to connect with, who actually have personalities"; and there would be less focus on aspects of gameplay too far removed from the central plot than there was in Morrowind.[59]

The role of the player character in the main quest was to be changed as well. In contrast to past games, where the player character would play a type of "chosen one", Oblivion would have the player character "find him, protect him, and help him."[60][61] Aside from that, in the opinion of Hines, "the main quest has similar themes and tones as in past Elder Scrolls games", and should still feel "epic", simply because of the way the gamespace is designed: with openness in mind.[61] Improving that aspect of the experience, said Hines, came mostly from improved information presentation.[60]

In-game screenshot showing Oblivion's user interface, HDR lighting and long drawing distance.

Technology

As they had done with previous games in the series, Bethesda threw out their old content and technology and began work anew. A new engine was envisioned, one which would take advantage of advanced lighting and shader routines, like high dynamic range rendering and specular mapping.[55] The final product was shipped with an engine formed of a mixture of in-house tech and Numerical Design Limited's Gamebryo engine,[62] "tricked out" in collaboration with Bethesda's graphics programmers and NDL.[63]

Senior producer Ashley Cheng has described the game as "pixel-shader heavy", taking advantage of the technology to render metal, wood, stone, blood, skin, and water; an advance over Morrowind, which had only used the tech to render water. Oblivion was to use normal maps, diffuse maps, specular maps, and parallax maps,[64] which Howard described as "kind of like displacement mapping".[65]

In Radiant AI, Bethesda introduced a new artificial intelligence system that would allow non-player characters to react and interact dynamically with the world around them.[66] Oblivion was to use Havok as its physics engine, following in the footsteps of Half-Life 2. Havok models the game's representations of telekinesis, theft, traps, tumbling,[67] paralysis, area effect fireball explosions,[68] and the contact between arrows and their targets; arrows, in Oblivion, may lodge themselves in objects and thereby increase their mass.[67]

Release

After an almost four-month delay, Oblivion went gold on March 2 2006[69] and was released for Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360 on March 21 2006.[70] The game was the first RPG title to be released for Microsoft's Xbox 360 console.[69] In addition to the standard release, a "Collector's Edition" was made available for both Windows and Xbox 360 which includes the 112-page Pocket Guide to the Empire, a Bonus DVD containing concept art, renders, and an approximately 45-minute long documentary on the making of Oblivion, and a coin replica of the in-game currency of Tamriel.[71] The game was released for the PlayStation 3 on March 20 2007.

Downloadable content

From April 2006 onwards, Bethesda began releasing small, downloadable packages of content from their website and over the Xbox Live Marketplace, for prices equivalent to between one and three US dollars.[72] Although gamers generally displayed some enthusiasm for the concept of micropayments for downloadable in-game content,[73][74] Oblivion's first package, a set of horse armour for Oblivion's steeds, caused significant discord on the forums of the Internet, as gamers disputed whether the item was worth its cost.[74]

Bethesda representatives made a variety of similar responses to inquiries regarding the package. Regarding the cost of the add-on, Hines stated that Bethesda aimed for a price point that "fit".[75] Later releases proved more popular,[76] following predictions from 1UP that, given Bethesda's response to customer criticism, they would be somewhat more substantial than the "Horse Armor" release was.[73]

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