Bruce Nesmith, the game designer and design director behind several The Elder Scrolls and Fallout video games, revealed why a movie adaptation of The Elder Scrolls would be a good idea.
In an interview with Press Box PR, Nesmith said that although he loved both franchises, he believed that a TV show for The Elder Scrolls wouldn’t work despite the success of Prime Video’s adaptation of Fallout. The game designer explained that the two franchises’ storylines were set up in different ways. Fallout has many elements that are unique to the game. Giving writers all these options and plots to work with is perfect for a TV series.
He continued to say that The Elder Scrolls, on the other hand, is much broader. It focuses more on the fantasy genre as a whole and enhances concepts that already exist. Nesmith said he believed that while the game is special in its own way, the themes exist in so many other major franchises, such as The Lord of the Rings films and their many spinoffs or The Game of Thrones, which would make it “not as interesting.”
There’s something very special and different and unique about Fallout that lends itself to becoming a TV or movie experience whereas The Elder Scrolls is trying to be a standard kind of fantasy. That’s not as interesting, not in this day and age where you already have The Lord Of The Rings movies. We’ve got Game Of Thrones. You’d have to try to find something to lean into that would be special about it.
You look at Fallout, everything is special about it. There is nothing like the Fallout universe anywhere else in gaming. It’s very unique. That makes it easy to make a TV show and draw eyeballs as opposed to going into a fantasy world where I’ve got elves and people throwing spells around. You’d have to raise those stakes. There’s a dragon? I’ve seen dragons 20 times before. What are you giving to viewers that’s new?
However, he made it clear that he wasn’t trying to say that no adaptation would ever work. He thinks that a standalone movie based on The Elder Scrolls could work. The franchise doesn’t have a core narrative like Fallout. It is much more of a “choose your own fate” type of game and allows the players to decide what happens next. This just wouldn’t work for television, where there needs to be a solid story that can carry the series long term. But a film could sidestep that specific aspect of the game. Telling a single self-contained story from the franchise’s lore would be a much better idea.
Different media have different needs and I don’t know that The Elder Scrolls would fit that media well. Maybe a movie but I would struggle to see a TV show.
There are currently no confirmed plans for an Elder Scrolls film or TV series at the time of this article’s publication.
Fallout seasons 1 and 2 are available to stream on Prime Video.
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Vijay Lakshman, Ted Peterson, Julian Lefay
- Character(s)
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The Vestige, Dragonborn, Nerevarine, Hero of Kvatch, Champion of Cyrodiil, Mannimarco, Sheogorath, Mehrunes Dagon, Vivec, Almalexia, Sotha Sil, Dagoth Ur, Talos, Alduin, Molag Bal