The setting combines pre-medieval real-world elements, such as a powerful Roman-like Empire, with high fantasy medieval themes, including limited technology, widespread magic use, and the existence of many mythological creatures.

The continent is split into a number of provinces inhabited by humans and humanoid fantasy races such as elves, orcs and anthropomorphic animals.

A common theme in the lore is that a chosen hero (represented by the player's character) rises to defeat an impending threat, typically a malevolent being or an antagonistic army.

Since debuting with The Elder Scrolls: Arena in 1994, the series has produced a total of five main games (of which the last three have each featured two or three expansions) as well as several spin-offs.

Designer Ted Peterson recalls: "I remember talking to the guys at Sir-Tech who were doing Wizardry VII: Crusaders of the Dark Savant at the time, and them literally laughing at us for thinking we could do it.

"[10] Ted Peterson worked alongside Vijay Lakshman as one of the initial designers of what became known as Arena, a "medieval-style gladiator game".

[10] Peterson, Lakshman, and LeFay were longtime aficionados of pen-and-paper role-playing games,[10] which greatly influenced the creation of the world of Tamriel.

Lakshman, who then worked at Christopher Weaver's Bethesda Softworks, came up with the name of The Elder Scrolls[10] and the words eventually came to mean "Tamriel's mystical tomes of knowledge that told of its past, present, and future".

The packaging included a scantily clad female warrior, which further contributed to distributor concern, leading to an initial distribution of only 20,000 units.

[10] He endeavoured to make Daggerfall's plot less "clichéd" than Arena's and involve a "complex series of adventures leading to multiple resolutions".

[8] It was influenced by analog games and literature that Julian LeFay or Ted Peterson happened to be playing or reading at the time, such as Dumas's The Man in the Iron Mask and Vampire: The Masquerade.

Based upon its customers' clear desire for massive role-playing game worlds, Bethesda redoubled its efforts to build the next major chapter.

[21] Initially designed to encompass the whole province of Morrowind and allow the player to join all five Dunmer Great Houses, it was decided that the scope of the game was too much for the technology available at the time.

The XnGine was scrapped and replaced with Numerical Design Limited's Gamebryo, a Direct3D-powered engine with transform, clipping, and lighting capacity,[22] 32-bit textures and skeletal animation.

The prior existence of the Construction Set, however, meant that the team "already had the tools in place to add content and features very quickly".

The game is set after the events of Oblivion, when the great dragon Alduin the World Eater returns to Skyrim; a beast whose existence threatens all life in Tamriel.

[68] The player character, Dragonborn, is a downloadable Mii fighter costume in the Nintendo crossover fighting game Super Smash Bros.

[72] On June 14, 2015, The Elder Scrolls: Legends, a collectible card game, was announced by Bethesda during the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2015.

[76] The Elder Scrolls: Castles, a mobile spin-off game similar to Fallout Shelter, was released for Android on September 28, 2023.

[83] This design trend continued with Morrowind, following the hiatus of similarly epic games in the interim, though Joystiq's previously noted insistence on graphics came again to the fore.

[85]: 138  Like most works of high fantasy, The Elder Scrolls games are typically serious in tone and epic in scope, dealing with themes of a grand struggle against a supernatural or evil force.

As is also typical in high fantasy works, magic and sorcery, mythical creatures, factions with their own political agendas, walled medieval cities and strongholds, and plot elements driven by prophecies and legends are common.

[90] There are contradictory creation myths, one of which claims that some of the gods were tricked into creating the mortal world, surrendering a portion of their power.

A tenth race, the Orsimer, or Orcs, reside in settlements scattered across Tamriel and, at some points in history, a kingdom inside High Rock known as Orsinium.

In Oblivion, a religious cult opens a dimensional gate to a Hell-like realm and throws the Empire into chaos by killing Uriel VII and all of his known heirs.

The player must join one of the three different military alliances that are vying for control of Tamriel in the Three Banners War, but is ultimately tasked with uniting all three factions against Molag Bal's attempt to assimilate the entirety of the planet Nirn into his realm of Coldharbour.

[98] Skyrim's Dawnguard expansion adds a quest to acquire the Scrolls to either assist or stop a vampire from blotting out the sun.

[99] At E3 2016, Bethesda Game Studios director Todd Howard reported that the studio was already working on a sixth installment in The Elder Scrolls franchise, although it would still be "a very long way off"[100] and at E3 2017, Bethesda Softworks vice president of public relations stated that no new title was in active development, and that they have "at least two major titles" to complete before this would change.

[102] At E3 2018, Howard presented a short teaser trailer for The Elder Scrolls VI and announced that it would be released following Starfield.

It was accused of being plagiarized as it shared a very similar plot to the Dungeons & Dragons adventure "The Black Road", written by Paige Leitman and Ben Heisler, and contains reworded text that substitutes some words for synonyms.