The Elder Scrolls

The Elder Scrolls, often abbreviated as TES, is a series of role-playing video games developed by Bethesda Softworks. The development 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 game began a tradition of games based on the principles of "being who you want and doing what you want" that has persisted throughout the series' history. To date, there are five titles in the main series of the game. Two expansions were published for The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, two more accompanying The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion 's installment, and three others for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

While beginning on DOS PC, the series has expanded to video game consoles, starting with Morrowind on Xbox and eventually expanding to Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 (Oblivion and Skyrim), Xbox One and PlayStation 4 (Online and Skyrim: Special Edition). Four Elder Scrolls titles were released for Java-enabled cell phones, Nokia's N-Gage, and the PlayStation portable. These titles are known as The Elder Scrolls Travels. Two novels based on the Elder Scrolls universe, The Infernal City and Lord of Souls, were published by Del Rey Books. An MMORPG adaption set in the Three Banners War, called The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited, was released for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in June 2015. The Elder Scrolls: Legends was released in 2016, and was be the first game available on iPad.