27 Years Ago, This Forgotten Elder Scrolls Game Introduced Multiplayer To Oblivion

A long, long time ago, there was a multiplayer Elder Scrolls game that allowed you to take the fight directly to Mehrunes Dagon, traveling to Oblivion to stop an invasion of demons. Nowadays, the conversation around the Elder Scrolls series is largely dominated by its more recent entries. It makes sense: Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim are all excellent games in their own right. But The Elder Scrolls has been a massive, influential series for a lot longer than those three games have existed. It’s been around since 1994, and there’s a lot more to it than its five core releases.

That includes one greatly overlooked 1997 release that has a lot in common with Oblivion and its recent remaster – An Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire. Although similar to Oblivion in its story concept, Battlespire is a strange game by Elder Scrolls standards, with a number of unique mechanics, including some fairly robust multiplayer features. It’s really the only time The Elder Scrolls has attempted something of the sort, even though it has a dedicated MMO now, and could actually have some interesting ideas for The Elder Scrolls 6.

What Battlespire Is

First released in 1997 for MS-DOS PCs, An Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire is a wholly unusual type of Elder Scrolls game, as evidenced by its unusual title. Much like the rest of the series, it’s an action RPG, but it’s a lot more linear and structured. There’s no open world, there are no merchants, there’s no currency, and there are no beds. You can’t pick your class – you’re a battlemage by default, although you can choose different races, each of which starts with certain skills higher than others.

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You can wander off the beaten path slightly to discover secrets, but the free roam, character customization, and discovery of games like Skyrim, Oblivion, even Arena is nowhere to be found here. You basically spend the entire game going from one level to another, killing demons in a variety of different ways. Battlespire is perhaps more of a dungeon crawler than it is an outright RPG. While puzzles and dialogue choices come into play, they’re hardly the game’s focus. It almost plays out like an Elder Scrolls-themed DOOM clone, just a little slower-paced, with more character customization and inventory management involved.

Plot-wise, though, Battlespire will sound a little familiar. You play as a member of the Imperial Legion at the titular Battlespire academy, which exists between the mortal world and the planes of Oblivion. When Mehrunes Dagon leads his daedric army through the gates, decimating the Legion, you’re forced to travel far and wide across Oblivion in order to exact your revenge. Admittedly, it’s not the most in-depth Elder Scrolls story (in part because of the relative lack of exploration and side quests), but you can already see elements of what eventually became Oblivion in its plot, and it’s an interesting precursor.

Battlespire Had Co-Op & Deathmatch Modes

The fighting mechanics in Elder Scrolls Battlespire.

Interestingly, though, Battlespire also had two multiplayer modes that go far beyond anything we’ve seen in mainline Elder Scrolls. They’re pretty common today: it included a co-op mode, where you could play through its story levels with friends, and a team deathmatch mode, where you could use your favorite weapons and spells from the base game to fight teams of other players. It’s absurd, but kind of brilliant: who hasn’t wanted to experience a massive open-world adventure with a friend?

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I’d say it was ahead of its time, but the truth is that Battlespire has a lot more in common with Quake than with other early Elder Scrolls games, including both of these multiplayer modes. Even so, The Elder Scrolls has never really tried anything like it since, but I think there’s room for that to change in The Elder Scrolls 6.

But It Could Be So Much More

An Elder Scrolls Online Elf and a Breton pose in front of a warrior from Oblivion. — Custom Image by Bruno Yonezawa

Nowadays, The Elder Scrolls still does online multiplayer, albeit in a very different form. Nowadays, the niche is filled by, well, The Elder Scrolls Online, a massively multiplayer RPG. ESO does, of course, allow players to complete quests in co-op, and there are more competitive player-versus-player modes. But it’s a lot less linear than Battlespire, with lots of side quests and infinitely more content.

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Now, I like ESO well enough, but to me, it never really felt like a mainline Elder Scrolls game. The exploration is good, but it’s not quite as awe-inspiring when the dungeon you stumble upon is already being raided by a party of players. The sense of freedom you get in the mainline games is also sorely missed, mainly because your character’s abilities are a lot more constrained by the class you pick.

Raiding dungeons, beating bosses, or just taking in the sights – it’s all a lot more fun when you have someone to share it with.

So, my pitch to Bethesda is to include more multiplayer options in future mainline Elder Scrolls games. I’m imagining something that blends the freedom and exploration of Oblivion with the simplicity of the Elden Ring seamless co-op mod: you might be able to summon a friend at any point during your adventure, and then wander around the world with them to your heart’s content. Raiding dungeons, beating bosses, or just taking in the sights – it’s all a lot more fun when you have someone to share it with.

This would bring the fun of Battlespire‘s co-op to a more flexible, modern open world. Of course, there are kinks to work out: game balance is always a concern when it comes to co-op, and The Elder Scrolls has a lot more lore to contend with than something like Elden Ring. Even so, there’s already a lot of appeal for the concept within the fandom. Co-op mods for Bethesda games have been around as long as I can remember, and, although they’re not always perfect, they’re undeniably popular and can be a lot of fun.

Elder Scrolls 6 Can’t Follow Oblivion Remastered’s Lead If It Wants Skyrim’s Longevity

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Perhaps somewhat paradoxically, though, I don’t think a new Elder Scrolls game should prioritize multiplayer. The last time Bethesda tried to turn one of its single-player properties into a mostly-multiplayer game, we got Fallout 76. It was much maligned in its early days for its weak story and its rampant microtransactions (although, to its credit, Fallout 76 has come a long way since then).

In a perfect world, The Elder Scrolls 6 would prioritize what works in the series’ best entries: meaningful roleplaying options, a flexible class system, and an enormous, immersive world. Slap some basic multiplayer on top, and the result would be irresistible.

Bethesda may regard Battlespire as a failed experiment, and it’s hard to blame them. It had a lot of technical issues, and lacked the freedom that makes the series’ mainline entries great. But that doesn’t mean we should throw all the ideas it introduced aside. Games like Elden Ring have proven that there’s a huge market for co-op open-world action RPGs, and that’s a niche Bethesda could easily fill. We don’t know much about what the next Elder Scrolls game will look like, but I hope it takes this lesson from everything that’s come before it.