The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard

The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard is an action-adventure from 1998 by Bethesda Softworks, another spin-off from the main Elder Scrolls series, this time set on the island of Stros M'Kai. It tells the story of a warrior named Cyrus who searches for his missing sister and gradually becomes entangled in a vast conspiracy with far-reaching consequences for the entire region of Hammerfell and its inhabitants.

In contrast to the open RPG entries in the series such as Daggerfall, Redguard is built on a fixed, platformer-flavoured world with an emphasis on jumping sections over chasms, third-person combat sequences, and environmental puzzles that make use of the surroundings, which brings it closer to an action-adventure like Tomb Raider than to a traditional RPG with free character development. The story is told in a markedly more linear fashion, with more emphasis on cinematic cutscenes and character dialogue than in the other, more open entries in the series.

Redguard was received as a bold but ambiguous experiment. Players appreciated the elaborate world of the island of Stros M'Kai and its culture inspired by Bedouin and Arabic aesthetics, but were less taken with a game that strayed far from the sprawling RPG that fans of the series were used to. Within the wider Elder Scrolls universe, Redguard remains a valuable source of lore about Hammerfell and the Redguards, although as a playable title it stayed a rather marginal, by now somewhat forgotten chapter of the great saga. The game also takes place well before the events of the main entries in the series, which makes it an interesting glimpse into the history of the world of Tamriel before players got to know it through later, far better known titles such as Morrowind, Oblivion or Skyrim. The emphasis on acrobatic jumping and climbing across the island's rocky terrain was a fairly unusual direction for the Elder Scrolls series at the time and showed that Bethesda was willing to try markedly different game genres under the same brand.