History of The Elder Scrolls from the beginning of time = D
Work on the series began in 1992, when employees of Bethesda Softworks, which previously specialized mainly in sports games, decided to change the genre of their future game Arena, making it a role-playing game instead of a fighting game. Influenced by Ultima Underworld and Dungeons & Dragons, the company developed the massive, open-ended, but ultimately secondary first-person role-playing game The Elder Scrolls: Arena, which was released in 1994 for DOS. Thus began the history of the series, which was based on the principle “be who you want and do what you want”.
The next game in The Elder Scrolls series, The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall, was released in 1996. Compared to Arena, which had only moderate success, Daggerfall was a more ambitious project. Daggerfall attempted to create a living 3D world the size of two Great Britains and build a role-playing system based on skill development rather than experience points. However, the ambition of Daggerfall did him a disservice: the game, hastily released, was filled with errors (“bugs”) and had excessively high system requirements for those times, which earned it the unofficial name “Buggerfall” – from the words bug and fall. According to one commentator, despite the fact that Daggerfall was a great commercial success, "the game is still based on bad code".
After the release of Daggerfall, Bethesda did not develop a sequel until 1998, instead releasing The Elder Scrolls Legends: Battlespire in 1997
and The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard – Casino-Action-Online.co.uk in 1998.
Both games were on a much smaller scale: Battlespire was a dungeon crawler, while Redguard was an action-adventure game with a third-person perspective and a linear story. The games sold poorly and Bethesda was on the verge of bankruptcy. It was only thanks to investments following the takeover of the studio by ZeniMax Media in 1999 that Bethesda came back to life.
To work on The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, Bethesda tripled its staff and again relied on high system requirements. Morrowind returned to the traditional non-linear and expansive game world and included hand-crafted landscapes and artifacts, but the game world was still smaller than its predecessors. Morrowind was released for Xbox and PC in 2002 and was a success among both critics and the gaming public, with the game selling 4 million copies by mid-2005. Soon, in late 2002 – mid-2003, two expansions were released: The Elder Scrolls III: Tribunal and The Elder Scrolls III: Bloodmoon.
Immediately after the release of Morrowind, in the same 2002, work began on The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.
The game runs on the GameBryo engine, which is an improved version of NetImmerse, used in the previous game in the series. Oblivion’s strengths were supposed to be its tight plot, improved artificial intelligence based on Bethesda’s own Radiant AI, improved physics based on the Havok engine, and impressive graphics. The game was released for PC and Xbox 360 in early 2006, for PlayStation 3 in early 2007. In late 2006 and early 2007, Bethesda released two expansion packs for Oblivion: The Elder Scrolls IV: Knights of the Nine and The Elder Scrolls IV: Shivering Isles.
In late October 2008, shortly after the release of Fallout 3, Paul Othon. Paul Oughton, Bethesda’s publishing director, in an interview with Gamesindustry.biz indicated that the next game in the series should not be expected until 2010.
ZeniMax Media, owner of Bethesda Softworks, registered the "Skyrim" trademark in 2006.
On April 27, 2009, Bethesda Softworks announced the release of two novels based on The Elder Scrolls universe by Greg Keyes. First novel, The Infernal City: An Elder Scrolls Novel (rus. Hell City), released November 24, 2009.
On December 11, 2010, The Elder Scrolls V was announced at the Spike TV Video Games Awards and the first teaser trailer was shown. The game received the subtitle "Skyrim" and the release date was announced – November 11, 2011. Previously, there were speculations that TES V: Skyrim would be based on a heavily modified Gamebryo engine, which powered the previous part of the game, TES IV: Oblivion. Bethesda denied these speculations, saying that the game is based on a new engine developed specifically for it.However, this new engine is almost identical (very close in animation and all parameters) to the version of Gamebryo that was used in Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas, which was noticed by gamers and criticized. Bethesda itself does not hide that the source of this “new” engine is a radical reworking of Gamebryo’s program code, taking into account the experience of Fallout 3 and Fallout NV.
On November 11, 2011, the fifth part of The Elder Scrolls, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, was released. The first official DLC "High Resolution Texture Pack" appeared on Steam on February 7, 2012. And on February 8, its Creation Kit editor was released for Skyrim. On June 26, 2012, The Elder Scrolls V: Dawnguard expansion was released for Xbox 360. PC and PS3 versions came out a month later. And at the end of June, Bethesda registered the Hearthfire trademark. Which subsequently appeared on Steam on October 4, 2012 and added the following functions mainly related to your own home, buying land, adopting children and building your own estate from scratch. On February 5, 2013, the third and second story DLC Dragonborn was released, on February 7 at 20:00 Moscow time a fan translation was released, and the official translation itself was released on April 5.
Approximately March 31, 2014, a long-awaited event by all fans of the Elder Scrolls series will take place – the release of The Elder Scrolls Online. We wait, hope and believe that the wonderful series of TES games will continue. = D
