Elder Scrolls: Blades supports motion controls but not touchscreen, amiibo support being considered, requires an online connection

Elder Scrolls: Blades was announced for Switch back at E3 2019, and we're still waiting on a final release date. While we hold out for that information, developers Craig Lafferty and Matt Carofano have answered some burning questions. Check out what they had to say in an interview with NintendoEverything below.

On including motion controls, but skipping touchscreen controls

Lafferty: ...We found that with the way the game plays, it maps really, really well to the Joy-Con. We were able to map all of the buttons, and we found that playing with the Joy-Con feels great, and having to take your finger off the Joy-Con to touch the screen was not. We actually added it in there and tried it, and found it wasn’t super intuitive.

Carofano: We’ve also added the motion controls too, and that brings a whole new element because then you really feel like I’m swinging the sword, and I’m raising this hand to block, and how the buttons work with that for the spells and the abilities are really, really cool. It’s a really great balance.

On considering amiibo support

Lafferty: ...We’re looking at other things the Switch offers, but we’re not sure what we’ll have at launch or not. amiibo support is something that’s on the table, but we’re not sure. It’ll depend on timing and what else we have for the game.

On requiring an online connection

Lafferty: Yes. It will, but having an offline mode is something we definitely hear from a lot of people for the game in general, so that’s something we always constantly look at – like how would we do it. We want to make sure – the online game, we’re adding PvP in the fall, we want to make sure cheating isn’t an issue. So it’s like, how do we do an online mode that makes sense? Right now we’re requiring an internet connection, but in the future it’s something we may add if we can have a good solution for it.