An Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire

An Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire is an RPG from 1997 by Bethesda Softworks, a spin-off from the main Elder Scrolls series that, instead of the vast open world typical of the series, focuses on the enclosed setting of the titular floating fortress Battlespire, used to train elite warriors known as Blades. The player finds themselves in the middle of a sudden attack on the fortress by demonic forces from Oblivion and must make their way through a series of interconnected dungeons to uncover what really happened and, above all, to survive.

Unlike the open-world entries in the series such as Daggerfall, Battlespire emphasises a more linear and action-oriented progression, demanding fights against daedra and the undead, and puzzles based on spells and interaction with the surrounding environment. The game keeps the series' characteristic system of spells and skills, but simplifies it in favour of a more straightforward and faster pace, which brings it closer to a dungeon crawler than to a traditional RPG with a large open world.

Battlespire received a mixed reception on release: some players appreciated the dark atmosphere of the fortress and the difficulty of the combat, while others sorely missed the freedom of movement and the vast world for which they had come to love the series earlier. Today the title is seen mainly as an interesting, though not entirely successful, detour in the history of Elder Scrolls, showing how Bethesda experimented with the format of the series before steering it for good towards the vast open worlds it is famous for today. Setting the game in a single, if sprawling, fortress with many interconnected levels also allowed the creators to concentrate on atmosphere and a dense, claustrophobic dread of being surrounded, which sets the game apart from the vast majority of other entries in the series, built on a sense of freedom and open space. The presence of a cooperative multiplayer mode, allowing players to go through the fortress's dungeons together with another player, was a unique step within the Elder Scrolls series, one that did not return in later main entries for a long time and remained more of an interesting historical sidestep.