We have now spent beyond the days of video game adaptations being flops that pass us. The last season 2 of HBO dominates the television landscape, while Minecraft (I love or hate) was a huge family success at the box office.
Another television title that has struck gold in recent years has been the benefits of Amazon's main video studios, in collaboration with Bethesda. It is funny that it is bloody and brutal, this science fiction program has just captured the good balance of references for fans of post-apocalyptic games, while creating a new story that has attracted new audiences.
Amazon
The approach of this vast and sprawling material gives me the hope that Bethesda now has the experience of taking another franchise in the Zeitgeist at the moment. I am of course talking about the series of fantastic games, The Elder Scrolls.
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion: Remastered was announced and released a week ago today. During the first four days, he accumulated four million downloads and counting – an incredible feat that once again proves a dedicated fans base that this universe has.
I was one of those players who connected to the stream, panting with admiration (while my husband was making fun of me) to the visuals of the imperial city and the emperor Uriel Septim VII, freshly updated for 2025. I also bought the title on the same day … although I unfortunately not be able to play that evening when my Xbox series took the whole evening to download the Monster 120 GB.
But I now have timed several hours in Oblivion, and that brought some of the tentacular scenarios that I know deserve to be also appreciated on the small screen by non-players. That said, more people have heard of the next series of the series, Skyrim of 2011 (which was remastered on everything, including a bloody refrigerator), so it could also be a candidate for a television adaptation.
Anyway, an Elder Scrolls television series is obvious, and I will give you three reasons why.
The vast world of Tamriel
While the fallout Video promotes Steampunk Towns in a sorry Californian landscape, an older television series offers something much more fantastic that will appeal to those who love franchises such as the Lord of the Rings and the Game of Thrones – with not only landscapes, but multiple races and many rents to explore.
Tamriel is a continent in the rollers of the ancients, and Oblivion and Skyrim take place in a province in this region.
Bethesda
The province of Oblivion of Cyrodiil, the House of Imperials, is diversified and lush. With the Royal Imperial City centered in the middle, the small surrounding towns each have their distinct personalities – from the picturesque streets of chorrol to the alleys of Bravil. During this time, the roads between the two are filled with wild flowers and in abundance color, which would translate beautifully on the screen.
Skyrim's land, inhabited by the Nords race, is not as attractive in my opinion, but it is always magnificent in its own way. Think of the rugged mountains, the snowy outposts and a sky filled with colors of another world thanks to the northern lights-and of course, dragons flying spontaneously above.
Even if a hypothetical television series was not a direct adaptation of Scrolls IV or V, we know that there are many more land to explore – the jungles of Elsweyr, which houses the Khajiit cat race, or the dunes of Hammerfell, the country of Redguards. The framework is an oyster from the writer.
Hannah Cowton-Barnes / Foundry
Captivating guilds
Like many Elder scroll players, I am firmly convinced that some of the best stories come from parallel quests and guilds. In fact, I almost always delay the main quests to forget and to Skyrim because they cannot compare themselves to the entertainment value that I get other missions.
Each game has a script for Guild outside competition, although the two factions appear in most scroll titles. For forgetting, it is black fraternity. The players are inducted into the guild of the murderers once they killed another cold blood character – they then receive a mysterious visitor of the character Lucien Lachance, who invites them to join a “rather unique family”.
The missions for fraternity include the staging of an accident by falling a minotaur head on a character, and a whodunnit, in which you are locked in a house with a guest party and you must deactivate them one by secret, returning them against each other.
In Skyrim, the Thieves guild stands above all, with the dragonborn recruited by Brynjolf and asked to commit a flight in broad daylight. If they succeed, they join the den of thieves and samples – but quickly learn that there is a traitor in the middle of their discovery.
These two guilds have characters and plots that would adapt perfectly to a television program – and once again, there are many others to adapt, mages, warriors, bards, etc.
The capacity of the same
The sense of humor of Fallout has made the television series stand out from the pack, and its ironic style is reflected in the Elder Scrolls series, where a spectacle could almost certainly create viral moments to attract new audiences.
Oblivion: Remastered circulates many of these moments. A perfect example is the fan of worship, an incessant wooden elf that will not leave you alone once you become champion of the arena. Many players have tried to kill him in a creative way, but it is an essential NPC, so he continues to reappear. It would be a brilliant cameo in a spectacle of old parchment.
There is also the Prince of Madness Daedric, Sheogorath, a key figure in the expansion of the trembling islands of oblivion and a quest secondary to Skyrim. His erratic dialogue is something that my school friends and I always quote to date.
For disposable liners that are easy to pass, there are the guards that patrol the land. Most of the Elder scroll fans will know that of Skyrim who says the expression: “I was an adventurer like you … Then I took an arrow on the knee”.
What I listed above is only a fraction of what only a television series Elder Scrolls could present. In truth, I do not know how a showrunner was going to choose a framework, not to mention a story on which to concentrate – but the three perspectives of Fallout were an intelligent way to cover an extensive world, and I have the faith that the source material in Oblivion, Skyrim and other titles is strong enough to create an emblematic spectacle that will succeed.
Bethesda boss Todd Howard told IGN last year that there was no project at the time to create a show or a film of Elder scrolls – he can wait for the good idea or the right script to present. And my boy, I hope this is the case because it could fall into history.
