User:Razr Nation/List of The Elder Scrolls video games

The Elder Scrolls (abbreviated as TES) is an action role-playing open world video game series developed by Bethesda Game Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks. The Elder Scrolls games take place on the fictional world of Nirn, on the continent of Tamriel, a large landmass divided into nine provinces. The actual Elder Scrolls play a very limited role in the storyline of the series, serving only as framing plot device, and are rarely referred to in-game, or even in the in-game literature. The first game, The Elder Scrolls: Arena, was released in 1994. It was intended for players to assume the role of an arena combatant, but development shifted the game into a role-playing game (RPG), beginning a tradition that persists throughout the series' history. The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall was published in 1996. Fueled by the modest success of Arena, Daggerfall was even more ambitious than its predecessor, featuring one of the first true 3D worlds on a large scale, a game world claimed to be the size of Great Britain.

After the release of spin-off games An Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire and The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard in 1997 and 1998, respectively, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, released 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. The game achieved commercial success, and sold over four million units by mid-2005. Two expansions were released between late 2002 and early 2003: The Elder Scrolls III: Tribunal and The Elder Scrolls III: Bloodmoon. Development of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion began in 2002, and focused on artificial intelligence improvements that interact dynamically with the game-world. Released in 2006, the game achieved commercial success and critical acclaim; expansion packs Knights of the Nine and Shivering Isles were released for the game.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim was announced on December 11, 2010, at the Spike Video Game Awards 2010. The game is not a direct sequel to its predecessor, Oblivion, but instead takes place 200 years later, in the land called Skyrim, in Tamriel. It was released on November 11, 2011 to critical acclaim, and two expansion sets, Dawnguard and Dragonborn, have been released as of December 2012. The Elder Scrolls Online, a massively multiplayer role-playing video game developed by ZeniMax Online Studios, was announced on May 3, 2012, in an exclusive reveal by Game Informer. The game is the first open-ended multiplayer installment of the franchise, and will be set a millennium before the events of the previous game in the series, Skyrim, although most of the continent of Tamriel will be playable in the game. The Elder Scrolls Online has been in development for 5 years prior to its announcement in May 2012 and is slated for release in 2013.