Elder Scrolls: Blades is an interesting thing. While everyone had been gushing for 7 months about being able to play the 6-year old Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim on the Nintendo Switch, developer Bethesda decided to create a brand new Elder Scrolls game built from the ground up for mobile. They announced Elder Scrolls: Blades at E3 this past June, and we were cautiously optimistic about the playable build we tried out at the show. At the same time they put the game up for pre-order on the App Store with an expected release date of September 1st. Everything was looking really promising.

Then as that September 1st date approached, Bethesda quietly changed the date on the pre-order page to September 7th. Weird. On that original release date this past Saturday we attended a Bethesda event at PAX West and they had Blades on hand and playable, but strangely it was the exact same demo they had shown at E3 back in June. So instead of the game being out at the height of PAX and available for everyone during that big Bethesda event, we got a 3 month old demo we had already seen. What a downer.

This leads to today’s latest Elder Scrolls: Blades development, and that is that Bethesda has once again adjusted the release date on the iOS App Store pre-order page and it’s now slated to launch on December 1st. While that’s a bummer, I do have to say that I hope this delay is for the best. I loved everything I played of Blades so far EXCEPT I felt the combat was extremely clunky and just not that fun. Combat is a pretty big part of Elder Scrolls, so hopefully this delay means they can fine tune that aspect of the game.

The rest of the game, especially the visuals and the overall vibe which is very Elder Scrolls-y, is spot on and I can’t tell you how wonderful it is to do some Bethesda RPG grinding with just one hand using my iPhone. I’m hoping that we’ll get some more new info or videos about Elder Scrolls: Blades to hold us over during this latest delay, and of course we’ll be keeping an eye out for such a thing. Otherwise, I guess strap in for another 3 months of waiting for this highly-anticipated game.