The Elder Scrolls: Blades is a free-to-play RPG coming to PC and mobile this fall

The next Elder Scrolls game is called The Elder Scrolls: Blades, and it's coming to phones, PC, consoles, and virtual reality this fall.

You play as one of the Blades, the Empire's top warriors, who returns to their hometown which has been destroyed and needs to be rebuilt. It's a first-person RPG with questsThe meat of the game is a town building mode, where you upgrade and decorate your town. As it levels up, you unlock new NPCs, quests, and more. And you'll be able to visit your friends' towns.

A video demo at Bethesda's E3 press conference showed first-person combat with touch controls on iPhone, navigating an inventory and equipping new armor and weapons, and playing the game in both portrait and landscape mode. There are dungeons and outdoor areas, with graphics that rival last-gen consoles.

In addition to the Town mode, there's also Abyss, "a roguelike experience where you can see how far you can go in an endless dungeon," and Arena, a a PvP combat environment. The demoed mobile version shows tapping and wiping to perform attacks, but the PC version will presumably support more traditional control methods.

You'll be able to register for early access here.

Here are the screenshots Bethesda has released so far.

Wes Fenlon
Senior Editor

Wes has been covering games and hardware for more than 10 years, first at tech sites like The Wirecutter and Tested before joining the PC Gamer team in 2014. Wes plays a little bit of everything, but he'll always jump at the chance to cover emulation and Japanese games.

When he's not obsessively optimizing and re-optimizing a tangle of conveyor belts in Satisfactory (it's really becoming a problem), he's probably playing a 20-year-old Final Fantasy or some opaque ASCII roguelike. With a focus on writing and editing features, he seeks out personal stories and in-depth histories from the corners of PC gaming and its niche communities. 50% pizza by volume (deep dish, to be specific).

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