The Elder Scrolls: Blades to Launch This Week

The Elder Scrolls: Blades is Bethesda's attempt at bringing the open-world role-playing game series The Elder Scrolls to mobile devices. Although the company had earlier announced it would be delayed, it turns out we won't have to wait much longer to play The Elder Scrolls: Blades. According to the App Store listing for the game, The Elder Scrolls: Blades release date is March 28. It's unknown if this would be for the Android version of the game as well. In fact, the iOS version of Blades is already playable in parts of the world like New Zealand right now.

"It's out in New Zealand where it's already March 28th and should be in your country by tomorrow," claimed one Redditor on r/iosgaming. Others speculate that this may be an always online, server-led experience.

"Out in Philippines but on log-in it says: The Game Server is not available," said another.

You'd think that after the missteps of its always-online games like Fallout 76, The Elder Scrolls: Blades would be offline. If true, it would make for a disappointing effort from Bethesda.

The game was announced at E3 2018 with Bethesda proclaiming that it plans to bring it to other platforms such as console and PC eventually. It was shown off during the iPhone XS, XS Max, and XR event back in September. At the time it looked ridiculously polished and close to finished.

The Elder Scrolls: Blades is played from a first-person perspective and has been specifically designed for mobile with touch controls and support for both landscape or portrait mode. The latest entry in the long-running Elder Scrolls franchise, Blades will utilise the processing capabilities to deliver console quality visuals for greater immersion

Bethesda claims that it features full scale processing, new depth of field effects, and is running 40 percent faster than it does on previous generation iOS devices. Its trailer at last year's iPhone event teased a dragon fight, harkening back to the most popular game in The Elder Scrolls series, Skyrim.

This isn't Bethesda's first stab of trying to bring the Elder Scrolls series to mobile platforms. After all, it did bring Skyrim to the Nintendo Switch and prior to that its very first attempt at handheld gaming was an Elder Scrolls PSP game called The Elder Scrolls Travels: Oblivion which was canceled midway in development.

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