The Elder Scrolls: Blades

The Elder Scrolls: Blades was an action role-playing game played from a first-person perspective. The game was designed specifically for mobile devices and features nearly-unavoidable one-on-one combat, which is engaged by tapping, swiping, or using virtual dual-stick controls via touch screen. Unlike the majority of the installments in the series, which are primarily built on open world and world map features, the game's overall design is linear, due to the challenges and limitations of mobile devices. Another distinction is that the abilities of sneaking around non-playable characters, moving corpses, and hiding/storing/stealing items were not included in the game.

Combat includes using melee weapons, magic spells, and ranged attacks. Regarding the use of magic, the player can equip up to three different magic spells to use during combat. The game features dungeons that are both hand-crafted by designers and procedurally generated. Players can customize and level up their characters to enhance their abilities.

The story takes place within the fantasy universe of The Elder Scrolls, during the Fourth Era, and sometime after the Great War. The player's character is a surviving former member of the Blades, an elite legendary group of spies and bodyguards who long-served and protected the Empire of Tamriel for many generations. Despite their heroic and legendary feats, the Blades have been outlawed, disbanded, slaughtered, and forced into exile as result of the Great War. Being hunted down by the Thalmor Altmer, the player seeks refuge in their hometown, only to find it indirectly destroyed by a group of mercenaries who were hired by the Bloodfall Queen, Urzoga gra-Batul the Orsimer.

Being sent by the Queen to collect taxes, one of the mercenaries destroyed a legendary Ayleid statue, which concealed a tunnel leading to a crypt under the town. Buried in the crypt was an Ayleid Sorcerer-King by the name of Celemaril Light-Bringer, a necromancer who once ruled the lands of Tamriel in the First Era. Being unleashed from the tomb, the now undead Sorcerer-King wreaked destruction on the town and caused the land to become ravaged by undead skeletons, spiders, skeevers (large, ratlike rodents), goblins, trolls, and wights. The player must brave through perilous dungeons, castles, ruins, caves, forts, and forests to rescue missing villagers, assist in rebuilding the town, seek out the mercenaries, and acquire more knowledge about the Sorcerer-King.

The Elder Scrolls: Blades was developed by Bethesda Game Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks. The game was announced by Todd Howard during Bethesda's showcase at E3 2018 and was playable on the showfloor at the expo. Blades was released for Android and iOS devices as a free-to-play game on March 27 2019. Howard anticipated that Blades would be released on consoles and PC in the future, along with supporting virtual reality.

On March 1, 2019, Bethesda announced that they would be running an iOS-only closed beta for the game (with testers during that period kept under a non-disclosure agreement), prior to an early access release for both iOS and Android. On March 27, 2019, that early access process began, when the release date for the iOS App Store version was brought forward to the following day (March 28, 2019), to coincide with celebrations for the 25th anniversary of The Elder Scrolls series. The Android version of the app was also made available from Google Play on that same release date. The store entries for the game state that it "will launch as early access", and players "must receive an invite to play the game" during that time. Bethesda confirmed that they were emailing invites to players in "waves".

During its early access period, Blades received generally mixed reviews from critics. David Jagneaux from IGN heavily criticized the game for its long loading screens, grinding, lack of innovation, and its use of microtransactions; however, he praised the game for its visuals, character development, story, and combat.

The final release received negative reception, with the Nintendo Switch version receiving "generally unfavorable reviews" on the review aggregation website Metacritic. The Switch version of the game received the 10th worst aggregate score on the site out of all games released in 2020. Fellow review aggregator OpenCritic assessed that the game received weak approval, being recommended by 8% of critics. PJ O'Reilly of Nintendo Life called the game "a bland and repetitive grind", criticizing the game's design, gameplay, and technical performance.