I had a thought. With the layout of the first two Elder Scrolls games with big buttons on the screen and swipe attacking, is it perfect for tablets? Of course, there'd be a lot of barriers to porting it. They would most likely have to re-write all the code to be able to run as a normal app. Without the simulated MS DOS environment. The object of a mouse being replaced by your finger, or stylus. Have small buttons on the sides of the screen, for turning. Normal swiping for attacks. I think it'd be great. What do you think? Greatest, and very difficult, idea ever? Or the deranged ramblings of someone who has no idea how difficult and arduous a task that would be and should be flogged publicly for such insolence! Leave your hate/love comments below.

Honestly, I think no. It would be awkward as hell for a lot of people, especially me. I just don't think it would make a good game for a tablet. I mean, how would you move your character and fight? It'll just be really awkward.

I like it better in MS-DOS, using the keyboard and mouse.

The idea is like buttons on the sides of the screen you press to move or maybe a button to toggle a movement mode and a combat mode. So swiping can do everything. Or, maybe both as separate options. I have absolutely no confidence that this will ever happen. It being ported to tablets, that is. I just noticed how, with the big on screen buttons, it was retro-actively fitted to be a touch screen game. Especially Daggerfall. With an on screen button to bring up the pause menu.

Yeah its possible, but I don't think Bethesda would spend the time on it. I'd rather them focus all the energy they can on TES VI.

It would be nice to have a tablet elder scrolls game though. Just have a side series like "redguard adventures" or something. But custom made for a modern tablet or mobile device.

Considering Bethesda's history with mobile games (and their mixed success with Elder Scrolls spinoffs in general), I'd rather they stay the course with main installments.

Of course, Daggerfall's combat system and controls might translate pretty well to something like the 3DS. Hell, a port of Morrowind to the 3DS would be cool as hell.

Not at all. The games are way too dated and BGS would likely have to build the game from scratch versus just a quick conversion. I also don't believe many would invest the time or effort to even try and play the games, considering they aren't user-friendly at all. Mobile gaming is a casual market, and Arena and Daggerfall are anything but casual.

I think aside from the technical stuff, the marketing problem is important. Those games are drastically defferent than what people expect from a mobile game. I don't think enough people would be interested in it to make it justifiable.

Yeah they are, problem is the idiots nowadays that want their hand held all the time. They are just as "user-friendly" as the newer ones are, the problem is the people today. They don't want to do anything anymore, just get stuff handed to them in games. I hate that.

I voted "maybe", since the only one ive tried is Arena, and I thought that it may be a bit wonky with touch screens.

I do plan to try Daggerfall at some point, since based on browsing UESP I think I'd like it a lot more than Arena, and if I could plug in some headphones and go adventuring while far from home id be very happy. There's no doubt that tablets would be able to handle some DOSBox, but the controls are a bit of a issue. Personally I don't like touch screens very much, so I may be a bit biased, but even a redesigned set of controls would be awkward to me. Im sure there is some sort of solution that would make me happy if this was to become a reality though, and I would 100% welcome it becoming a reality.

... not really? The UI and the controls for Arena and Daggerfall were uninformative, cluttered, and a pain in the ass to navigate. Daggerfall at least lets you remap the controls, but Arena doesn't even support mouse look. The journals were often vague to navigate and didn't record all of the important information, and some mechanics for Enchanting and Classmaking were broken either by being imbalanced or literally not working at all. Not to mention some dungeon quirks like an inconspicuous torch among dozens opening the secret door to proceed, or http://youtu.be/xa11QQ6H-jk?t=3m37s. And all of this applies to many PC games of the time.

You may be on something if you're talking about the gameplay itself, but "hardcoe" mechanics are on the rise. Tons of non-RPG games are adopting RPG mechanics, and some are even going for realistic needs and perma-death. I'd say the main thing that would keep Arena or Daggerfall from succeeding on handhelds is the aesthetics; art fatigue out the wazoo, especially for Daggerfall.

I find it hard to think of a satisfying way to play the games on a tablet, so no, I don't think they would make good tablet games.

Yeah, when I played http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Labyrinth on the DS I felt a nice TES-ish game could be made with similiar controls. It worked rather well I think.

Not to mention the ingame Daggerfall tutorial is completely broken. The game asks you if you want it, and even if you say 'yes', absolutely nothing happens.

I guess I'm one of the few who doesn't notice them. Arena and Daggerfall work just fine for me. And I like it's vague descriptions, makes it a bit more challenging.
I don't see anything wrong with them both. People nowadays don't want that, they want to be told where to go all the time. Can't blame them sometimes though.

Anyway, as I stated above, I don't think it would make very good tablet games. Or smartphone games for that matter. I wouldn't like the touch screen controls, I'm more comfortable with either a keyboard and mouse or a controller, it'll just be to damn awkward for me. I'll stick with the MS-DOS versions, but that's just me.

Control scheme won't work.

On a tablet- tell me how you would jump? Button? Ok.

How about a long jump? You know, performed by moving forward and jumping? A tactic useful for melee characters to close range with pesky spellslingers without dying?

I'd love to be able to play those games on mobile devices (they could probably get Morrowind to work on them as well), but as many have already said, the controls would be very awkward. I suppose it could work, and it'd be great to play those games everywhere, but I don't know where they'd fit all the buttons. And then there's the problem of the popularity. Even Skyrim is considered a 'nerdy' RPG by the majority of the people that I know, I really doubt that 2 hardcoe 90's RPG's would appeal to a lot of mobile gamers. They usually want instant gratification, not something extremely slow paced where it can take hours to finish one dungeon.

Well, there are other ways of controlling a tablet, such as tilting it, and swipe movements. You could probably control movement and view camera completely with those controls, and only need "buttons" for attack, inventory, map, etc.

I'm not suggesting I think it's a good idea. I don't even think it falls into the realm of "possible" at this point, given that the source code for Daggerfall is reportedly lost.