Bethesda had huge news during their E3 2018 press briefing. They may have just announced competition to Fortnite’s stranglehold on our collective consciousness. They have just announced the release of their first foray into fully mobile Elder Scrolls game. The Elder Scrolls: Blades, coming this fall, will be free-to-play on iPhone, iPad Android devices, consoles, PCs, and high-end VR. It appears to have all the trappings of what we have come to expect from Bethesda and The Elder Scroll franchise, character customization, swords, spells, beautifully rendered visuals, interactive environments, dungeons, and combat, combat and more combat.
Blades will have three distinct gameplay options:
- Abyss: A never-ending, progressively more difficult dungeon crawl
- Arena: Real-time one on one combat
- The Town: You are responsible for rebuilding your town after it is destroyed. Bethesda has indicated that this will be a fully customizable environment that allows you to create to your own preferences and then share what you have created with your friends. i.e. you get to visit them and they can visit you.
So what does this mean to us parents? First of all the as with most Bethesda games, I expect that ultimately it will end up with a rating of T or higher so we will have to keep that in mind when our kids ask if they can download it. Second, this is a mobile game and just like we have said here about Fortnite there are challenges involved in controlling screen time. Third, this will be a cross-platform game that you can play on your iPhone against someone playing on their PC or someone on VR. And finally, Bethesda has made this game one that could be played in either landscape or portrait mode on your phone so it can be played with one or two hands. For parents, it means that while you could more easily play this during work meetings (their words not ours). It also means that you will have to be a bit more diligent if your kids have a tendency to want to sneak in games when they are not supposed to.
Ultimately though, as a fan of The Elders Scrolls franchise, I am excited to play this and am looking forward to putting this through all the paces.