E3 2018: Skyrim Was On A Lot Of Platforms, But Elder Scrolls Blades Will Be On More

Throw a stone and chances are you'll hit a copy of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. The game has been re-released on so many platforms that, at this point, even Bethesda is making jokes about it. At the start of its E3 2018 press conference it showed off a version for Amazon's Alexa devices, as well for refrigerators.

During the same, conference, Bethesda's Todd Howard also revealed a new Elder Scrolls for mobile called "Blades," and in an interview with GameSpot, he said that game will be on even more platforms than Skyrim.

To be fair, Howard and Bethesda have been up front with their intention to bring the game to platforms beyond mobile devices. When asked if they were aiming for Skyrim levels of ubiquity for Blades, Howard replied it "will be more than that." During the press conference Howard talked about a future where Blades players across mobile, console, and VR would be able to play together.

When asked if other versions of Blades would require significant changes, Howard said that the game was built to be scalable, as it planned to bring the game to multiple platforms, as it did with strategy-sim Fallout Shelter.

"It's been built [to be scalable] from the beginning," he explained. "We knew, 'Hey, we're gonna take this, because we did it with Shelter, where Shelter, even though it's a very touch-based screen mobile game, it's on everything now. It's on mobile phones, it's on PC, it's on Xbox, PS4 now, Switch.'"

He continued: "And we kind of got there and we said, 'Well, from the beginning, let's architect Blades to do that.' And it has an all-new mobile backend for us, that we can make that cross-platform play work."

During Bethesda's E3 2018 conference, it also announced new Prey and Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus DLC, alongside a full-blown Elder Scrolls VI. For more news from the show check out our roundup of all the Bethesda press conference.