The Elder Scrolls only started to find mainstream success between the releases of Morrowind and Oblivion, but Bethesda was keen on expanding the series into a franchise well before that point. The 1997 release of An Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire is rarely discussed these days, but it's been hiding a secret for over 29 years. Today, The Strong National Museum of Play has lifted the veil on a mysterious Easter egg that's been lost for decades.
If you're not familiar with Battlespire, it's essentially a linear dungeon crawler set in the world of the Elder Scrolls. It's still a first-person game that retains much of the crunchy RPG combat that defined Arena and Daggerfall, just within a much more constrained location. Battlespire's development was led by the "father of The Elder Scrolls," Julian LeFay, who died in 2025.
As documented on the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages wiki, players have known for some time that there's an Easter egg in Battlespire involving a photo featuring a photo of some members of the development team. "It is not currently known how to get this Easter egg to display or if it actually functions in the final game," the UESP wiki laments. However, the mystery has finally been solved thanks to The Strong Museum, which has recently received a set of documents that belonged to LeFay.
On the eve of Bethesda's 40th Anniversary, a sneak peek at The Strong Museum's Julian LeFay papers looks at an Easter egg from An Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire that has remained undiscovered for over 29 years.
As explained in a Bluesky video from Strong director Andrew Borman, if you load into the game and hold down the number 1 on your keyboard as you type the word "spire," the dev photo will pop up on screen along with the caption "Battlespire rules!"
The degree to which Battlespire rules is somewhat questionable, since it received mediocre reviews upon release and was jointly credited – alongside Redguard – as the start of a down period for Bethesda that the studio only recovered from with the success of Morrowind. But Battlespire was the final Elder Scrolls game LeFay worked on as a Bethesda employee (though he briefly did contract work on Morrowind) and in many ways marks the final chapter of the series' early format.
The fact that Battlespire still had secrets to reveal after all these years is remarkable, and it's a testament to the lasting impact of the world LeFay ushered into existence that people still care to uncover them.
Todd Howard joins fans mourning "the driving force in the creation of The Elder Scrolls and the foundations of Bethesda as a game studio," Julian LeFay: "Without Julian, we would not be here today"
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