The Elder Scrollsfranchise has been somewhat paused over the last decade. WhileElder Scrolls Onlinecontinues to produce new content, the mysterious sixth entry in the main franchise has left fans waiting an awfully long time for its eventual release.
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In the meantime, players who were too young to enjoy the older entries in the franchise have gone back and found them. Frequently, what they find is a lot of darkness.The Elder Scrollsgames are known for including many dark missions, but sometimes other themes offset that darkness with humor, brighter visuals, or unusual music choices.
5Morrowind
The third game in the mainElder Scrollsseries isMorrowind. This was the first game to really level up the franchise, and it is still regarded with a lot of love by fans of the series.Despite being over twenty years old now, many gamers still return toMorrowindfor another playthrough time and time again. There are a lot of missions and aspects to this game that appear light-hearted on the surface, like a sad sorcerer who has been imprisoned by his own magical companions. But players continuing on will discover this sorcerer was force-fed his former friends and realize the moreterrifying darkness hiding in the depths of Morrowind.
The darkness ofMorrowindis apparent between the deep lore, the political aspects of the story, and in particular, the Bloodmoon Expansion.Skyrimfans will be intrigued by this expansion, where the player helps to found Solstheim and has the option to become a werewolf. This darker storyline, and the other quests available throughout the main campaign ofMorrowind, had a darker aspect and many surprisingly adult themes when compared with some of the relatively light-heartedElder Scrollsgames which were being released around the same time. For example,The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguardhad come out a couple of years prior toMorrowindand was comparatively a fun, light-hearted, colorful romp.
4Elder Scrolls Online
The original base-gameElder Scrolls Onlinehas given fans of theElder Scrollsfranchise a lot of joy while they continue to wait forElder Scrolls 6to be released. The MMORPG has changed the franchise and yet kept many things the same. The darkness of the previous games in the franchise has not been changed here, and missions like Questionable Contract stay with players long after they finish the game.
Questionable Contract sees the player help a mage hired by a village to clear a forest. If the mage fails, then his wife, a prisoner of the village, will be force-fed to him. There aren’t many quests quite that disturbingly dark in the game, but the player does also have to help the Argonians avoid being wiped out by the Aldmeri Dominion in what is clearly attempted genocide. Including this darkness, there are a lot ofthings that ESO does better than most MMOs.
3Oblivion
The fourth main entry in theElder Scrollsfranchise is a heavily loved game, and fans continue to debate today whether it is better than the follow-up,Skyrim. Whatever players believe,Oblivioncertainly isn’t as dark asSkyrimwould later be, but it does have many disturbing themes and missions which catch players off-guard ina relatively happy, even unintentionally funny world.
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The comedy, colorfulness, and fun ofOblivionis overshadowed at times by missions like “Baiting The Trap” where the player causes horrific pain, either physical or psychological depending on the choices players make, on some adventurers. Perhaps the worst part is that none of these choices matter, the adventurers all die as a result of whatever pain is inflicted upon them. There are other missions, such as one in Hackdirt where a cult is attempting to sacrifice a child, and the Sanguine quest which forces an entire party of people to strip. Both of these can be viewed with amusement on the surface but are in reality very dark quests that leave players stunned by the horrors.
2ESO: Greymoor
The Elder Scrolls Onlinehas had several expansions to date, allowing players to explore areas of Tamriel that haven’t been seen since the days ofElder Scrolls: Arena. ButGreymoor, which allows players to return toSkyrimin what was a greatly worrying follow-up to the hugely successful game, was perhaps the darkest expansion to date.
Some of the darkest quests are set in and around Morthal, a place familiar toSkyrimfans, where paranormal sightings send the player on a journey to uncover frozen bodies, feral animals, and a death mage at the heart of it all. Two large quests need to be completed to uncover what is really occurring in Morthal, but it is one of the darker investigations players will engage in anywhere in Tamriel. Of course, the main quest inGreymoorfocuses on a vampire lord devouring as many souls as possible, so the whole thing is fairly dark.
1Skyrim
Skyrimitself is, without a doubt, the deepest dive into the darkness that any of theElder Scrollsgames have taken. Many of the missions lead players to dark deeds, particularly the sixteen Daedric missions which force players to engage in cannibalism, priest torture, companion murder, and worse. The game is bursting with violent opportunities for murderwith countless great weapon choices.
But besides all of that,Skyrimitself is a dark and foreboding place living in dark times, with dragons returning and a civil war brewing. There is ahuge volume of world-building toSkyrim. The game is much less bright or comedic thanOblivion, and storylines like the Dark Brotherhood which begin with the player murdering an old woman and being forced to murder a tied-up captive are incredibly dark. Players can choose lighter paths through many of the quests inSkyrim, andcan role-play as a true hero, but it is entirely possible they’ll end up as a vampire or werewolf destroying countless innocent lives.
