Games

Biggest Traditions In The Elder Scrolls Series

Published

21 seconds ago

January 10, 2025

Christoph Rediske

biggest traditions in the elder scrolls series

Summary

Table of Contents

Most players find themselves hoarding loot, stripping corpses, and pawning off valuables.
Multiple playthroughs are essential due to the vast content and player limitations by design.
Lore retcons, adjustments, and missing features challenge players.

The Elder Scrolls series is a gaming phenomenon. It is a series with incredibly deep lore, beautiful art and music, revolutionary design innovations, and a wide audience appeal. As such, the world of Nirn has the rare power to bring casual and hardcore gamers together, pleasing superfans eager to delve deep into immersion and non-gamers looking to mess around in a fantasy world.

7 Most Iconic Dungeons In Elder Scrolls, Ranked

Oblivion, Morrowind, and Skyrim have some great dungeon experiences, but these underground gauntlets are The Elder Scrolls’ most memorable and iconic.

While the series has changed drastically since its inception, there are a few traditions that each game adheres to that become obvious with even the most surface-level playthroughs. These familiar features will likely make an appearance in The Elder Scrolls 6, which will likely be released sometime in the current kalpa, before Alduin returns to finally eat the world as he was originally created to do.

10

Becoming An Insatiable Loot Hoarder

Swiping Everything That Isn’t Nailed Down

Thanks to the ability to carry an infinite amount of gold and cart around an impossibly heavy amount of gear, most players have a tendency to pocket any valuable they see, including the clothes of any dead people they come across, leaving a trail of naked corpses in their wake.

From Arena to Skyrim, looting and pawning is the most efficient way to make gold, and with such an abundance of unnamed bandits and unlocked treasure chests scattered around Tamriel, it’s easy to see why most players, with the exception of roleplayers and those suffering from gymnophobia, would develop hoarding tendencies.

9

Multiple Playthroughs

One Character Is Never Enough

In terms of physical distance and content, each Elder Scrolls game is enormous. With such a vast size, it might be tempting to think that one playthrough would be enough to satiate fans. However, a good RPG limits a player’s abilities and experiences depending on their character build choice.

5 Best Open-Worlds In The Elder Scrolls Games, Ranked

The Elder Scrolls franchise has included a number of games that are notable for their amazing open-world game maps.

As such, it is almost universal that players will load up a new character to see what they can do differently on a new playthrough. This might mean seeing what life as an Argonian is like in Morrowind, defying the Nine Divines and going down the path of evil in Oblivion, or trying something other than a stealth archer run in Skyrim.

Tamriel’s Literacy Levels Must Be Through The Roof

It is said that fewer people than ever are reading books today. However, a huge tradition in every Elder Scrolls game since Daggerfall is the appearance of readable, collectible in-game books and scrolls. These tomes supply the player with entertaining stories, skill increases, tidbits about the lore, and quests or quest hints.

The total number of books in the series has grown to the size of a small library as many books carry over to the sequel. The Elder Scrolls themselves do not actually make an appearance in every game, and as any lorebeard worth their saltrice would know, they are not readable to mortal eyes, at least not without training, and make their readers blind besides.

7

Meme-Worthy Guards

The Long Arm And Punctured Knee Of The Law

To a time-rewinding Shezarrine, Dragonborn, or prophecized hero (in other words, a player character), guards, in their attempt to uphold order and the law, would seem laughable. However, the guards in every Elder Scrolls game have always shared an unintentionally funny quality to them.

Sheograth and an Ogre in The Elder Scrolls

7 Funniest Quests In The Elder Scrolls Games

These Elder Scrolls quests are so hilarious that they put even the cheesiest fantasy flicks to shame.

Whether it’s the small squad of guards all yelling “Halt! Halt!” in Daggerfall, the suspicious scowls of Morrowind‘s Ordinators, or Oblivion‘s always-zesty, hyper-zealous Imperial guards, these upholders of the law are sure to crack a smile on the player’s face. And of course, Skyrim‘s hold guards birthed the undying “arrow to the knee” meme, amongst others.

6

An Immersive First-Person Perspective

Witnessing Dawn’s Beauty Through The Player Character’s Eyes

There are plenty of games that provide a first-person view, but besides a few other video game series that fell out of favor, at least in the West (Wizardry), being able to see a fantasy landscape in first-person mode was a novelty in RPGs, which would usually take a top-down view.

The Elder Scrolls has since allowed players to switch to third-person to admire their character, but each game is built with this intimate perspective in mind. While there are a handful of first-person RPGs today, few can scratch the itch like TES can.

5

Lore Retcons And Hand-Waving

Made A Mistake? Call It A Dragon Break

In a series as large and as old as The Elder Scrolls, it is understandable that some details in the lore will change and the occasional mistake will be made. However, Bethesda has seen fit to make some gigantic alterations across every game so far, each with its own hand-wave explanations.

Elden Ring Metaphor ReFantazio Baldurs Gate 3

10 Best Fantasy RPGs With a Focus on Lore and History

These fantasy RPGs are perfect for players who enjoy sinking their teeth into hours upon hours of lore and history.

For example, the Khajiit and Argonian races were originally human in appearance in Arena, the nature of the Daedra princess changed for Morrowind, up until Oblivion, the lands of Cyrodiil were comprised of jungles, swamps, and rainforests, and in Skyrim, the blades became dragon hunters and most Nords left behind their hardcore warrior ways and old gods and became Talos-worshipping farmers.

4

Missing Features From The Previous Game

Todd Howard’s “Less Is More” Design Philosophy

Although not every skill in Daggerfall could be considered useful or all that interesting (the language skills especially), there were an impressive number to choose from. Since then, skills have been slowly removed, as have certain weapon types (spears), spells (levitation), and other features from previous Elder Scrolls games (i.e., layered armor, spell crafting, and transportation options).

The most drastic removal was made in Skyrim when skill levels were replaced with perk points and attributes were removed entirely. Todd Howard has been known to say that instead of thinking about adding new features in each game, he tends to think about what can be taken out to better streamline the game and to provide more focus on the remaining elements.

3

Getting Sidetracked With Sidequests And Exploration

Just One More Dungeon Run

If the Elder Scrolls games were linear in nature, players would likely finish their playthroughs much quicker and be done with their games. However, a great tradition in every TES game is the having the experience of being sidetracked by miscellaneous quests, unexpectedly long dungeon crawls, or simple curiosity about what is over the next hill.

Skyrim-15-Amazing-Quests-You-Should-Complete-Before-The-Elder-Scrolls-6

Skyrim: 17 Amazing Quests You Should Complete Before The Elder Scrolls 6

While Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls 6 slowly becomes a reality, a few stand-out Skyrim quests should be revisited in preparation for the sequel.

Fast travel has since become a staple, but where players know there is a breadth of unexplored space between their current position and destination, they will usually opt against taking a loading screen shortcut and take the long (and often distracting) way around.

2

The Prison Break Opening

A Palate Cleanser For The Delicious Taste Of Freedom

Since The Elder Scrolls Chapter 1: Arena, the first thing players see in The Elder Scrolls is the bleak sight of captivity. Either from a cell, shipwreck, prison boat, or execution cart, the player’s first task is to buy themselves freedom.

This could be a clever way to tell players with ill intentions that their avatar is already evil-natured. Alternatively, it could be to emphasize the amount of freedom the player has upon finally reaching the open world with their release.

1

The Burgeoning Mod List

Spending More Time Tweaking The Game Than Playing It

Every game in The Elder Scrolls series is special in its own way. However, either because of specific design decisions or a limitation of game design (time and money), a huge amount of PC players have always taken to modding tools and websites to spiff up their copy of the game as they see fit.

The modding scene for Skyrim, Oblivion, Morrowind, and now, with the release of Unity, even Daggerfall, is thriving. The possibilities for custom games are now endless, although this does come with one significant downside: modders can unintentionally spend more time modding their beloved game worlds with amazing custom creations than actually experiencing them in-game.