The Elder Scrolls has been announced for mobile. The Elder Scrolls: Blades is a forthcoming role-playing game you can play on the go, right on your iPhone X or Android handset.
But it's so much more than that besides. The vision of this game is huge: in addition to being mobile first, Blades will be available for a wider range of platforms, including high-end PCs and virtual reality platforms.
Better still, as it's a cross-platform release, irrelevant of which source device you're using to play, all players will be present in the same world. So you might be playing one-handed on your mobile phone against someone else half way around the world who's donning a VR headset.
The Elder Scrolls: Blades features some interesting looking mechanics, such as the ability to play in both portrait and landscape mode on mobile devices. The combat is obviously different to the series' established games, in order to make it accessible to multiple platforms. As the screens above show, there's also plenty of scope for customisation and levelling-up, including character and city building.
So why now? As Todd Howard, director at Bethesda Game Studios, noted on stage at the company's 2018 E3 showcase, its previous app game, Fallout: Shelter, has reached more than 200-million players - which is more players than not just Bethesda's most successful game, but more than every single game the company has ever made, combined. And this is a decades-old company, so you can see the appeal.
Indeed, the company is going all-out when it comes to the series, with a tongue-in-cheek Skyrim launch platform video, and the announcement of The Elder Scrolls 6 also heading up the so-called #BE3 press conference at E3 2018. It's an exciting time to be a fan of Tamriel.