The mid '90s were an auspicious time for Bethesda. The Skyrim studio cut its teeth making sports and licensed Terminator games before moving into the (at the time) niche territory of RPGs Bethesda's upper management were initially wary, but The Elder Scrolls: Arena was enough of a success to get a sequel approved, The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall, which struck gold for the small studio. The pioneering open-world game was a hit, so work on its sequel, Morrowind, started immediately after, and Bethesda was seemingly on the path to becoming the RPG juggernaut it is today. But there are two forgotten Elder Scrolls games that came first.
Rather than doubling down on what worked so well for Daggerfall, Bethesda took its new flagship series off-piste. An Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire (1997) and The Elder Scrolls Adventures - Redguard (1998) were games whose titles hinted that they'd be the start of new Elder Scrolls spin-off series - expanding the IP into a genre-spanning saga. On a leaflet inside the Battlespire box, Bethesda co-founder Christopher Weaver even wrote that "Battlespire is the beginning of a hybrid genre based on your input."
The question of why today in 2022 we're not eagerly anticipating the latest Elder Scrolls 'Legend' or 'Adventure' can probably best be answered by the fact that neither game was that great. But given that these games contributed to the much-anticipated Morrowind being delayed and - according to some - a financial downturn for Bethesda in the late '90s, perhaps a bigger question is how and why they came to exist in the first place?
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