Retro Elder Scrolls Games are Now Available for Free on Steam [IGN]

1994’s The Elder Scrolls: Arena and 1996’s The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall have arrived on Steam ahead of Bethesda’s own games launcher being retired next month.

As reported by Kotaku, five games have been moved to Steam so far including these two, plus Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory (which is also available for free) and two Elder Scrolls spin-offs from the late 90s: An Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire and The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard.

The latter two are a little more expensive at $6 each, but fans probably needn’t panic in trying to grab the freebies before the price goes up – Arena has been free since 2004 and Daggerfall since 2009, to celebrate the tenth and 15th anniversaries of The Elder Scrolls respectively.

While they’re very different experiences from the most recent Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, which itself is now more than a decade old, the first two games boil down to similar RPG fundamentals.

In Arena, the player is tasked with uncovering a conspiracy against King Uriel Septim VII, traversing across all of Tamriel and fighting through procedurally generated wilderness to complete various main and side quests.

Daggerfall follows a similar model but instead takes place in just two regions of Tamriel: Hammerfell and High Rock. The ghost of King Lysandus is trapped on earth and it’s the player’s job to free him, again taking part in quests picked up from towns and cities across the game.

Those who’ve already bought the games and other Bethesda titles from its launcher can migrate them over to Steam starting today, April 27, alongside any unspent wallet funds ahead of the launcher shutting down for good on May 11.

The mainline Elder Scrolls series has been somewhat dormant since Skyrim was released in 2011. While Bethesda Game Studios has worked on a number of games including those in the Fallout franchise, it chose to prioritise its new space-based IP Starfield over anything else.

This means that, though the Elder Scrolls VI is definitely in development, it was pushed back in order to focus on Starfield. The game is still in the design phase and therefore years away, though we do know it’s likely to be an Xbox exclusive following Microsoft’s acquisition of Bethesda in 2020.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer who occasionally remembers to tweet @thelastdinsdale. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.