One of the ways games are different to books or movies is that they end when we stop playing them, whether that's as soon as the credits roll or at the new of new game + or after 100 hours of sidequests done while ignoring the main storyline entirely. Fulfil your own dang prophecy!

Our weekend question is this: Do you keep doing sidequests after you finish the main story? Do you hit uninstall as soon as the world is saved, or do you push on? When a game gives you a save from before the finale have you ever gone back to it and then thoroughly explored the rest of the map for completion's sake? Or does knowing how it ends take all the joy out of going back? Let us know your answers in the comments.

Chris Livingston: Yes

Definitely. When the main quest is done, it's primo sidequest and mess-around time. The Elder Scrolls, the Far Cry series, the GTA series, the Fallout games. The world always feels a little different, somehow, when the main quest is done. There's no pressure, I guess? It's more leisurely, you can pick some minor task you've been wanting to get to but haven't had time. It's like when you have a day off during the week but everyone else is at work. You can get a lot done but there's no real hurry.

Andy Chalk: No

I play the absolute hell out of most games, so there usually isn't much in the way of sidequests left by the time I've reached the end. Stuff that does get missed usually stays that way: I tell myself that I'll get back to it, and the intent is sincere, but it never happens. I still have Legends of Grimrock 2 installed because there are some untranslated runes (or something like that—it's been a while) I promised myself I'd get to that might unlock a secret passage to some cool treasure or gear. Obviously that's not going to happen, but, you know, it might. It could. Don't judge me.I will sometimes horse around with mindless post-credits bashing like the Ubercommander assassination missions in Wolfenstein: The New Colossus, but that rarely lasts. Once the stories are over, it's over.

Wes Fenlon: Fallout 3 yes, Witcher 3 no

I can think of a few games where I did keep playing, even after the credits rolled. In Fallout 3, for example, Bethesda patched the original, definitive ending to let you keep exploring the Wasteland, and I did exactly that. I must've scoured that entire map for interesting locations and sidequests I'd missed. But in most games, I take the procrastinator approach: I meander off the main path and do everything in the game I could possibly want to before begrudgingly finishing up the main quest. 

In The Witcher 3 I spent 10 hours towards the end just hunting down the top-tier Wolf School armor, because I wanted to finish the game in some fancy duds. In Zelda: Breath of the Wild (which isn't a PC game, sorry!) I didn't fight the final boss until I'd completed all 120 shrines. I guess I like the ending to be the end of my time with a singleplayer game, in most cases, but I might spend months or even years putting off getting to it.

Phil Savage: Only if it's The Elder Scrolls

I always intend to. I'll make mental checklists of all the collectibles I'll snap up; the map markers I'll reveal; or, in the case of Assassin's Creed Origins, the elephants that I'll fight. But almost always, the minute the credits roll, I'll exit out and never go back. I'm not really sure why, maybe the fact that I'm no longer working towards a definitive ending robs the game of any sense of greater purpose. Maybe there's just too many other games fighting for my attention—why spend longer with one I've already finished?

The main exception is The Elder Scrolls series, probably because their main quests feel so ancillary to the game at large. They've never felt like the thing driving me through that world, so finishing them is no big deal.

Jody Macgregor: Yes, but with a case of alt-itis

I finished The Witcher 3 years ago but keep it installed because sometimes I feel like going on a monster hunt, or riding through the windy forests looking for icons. I'm a terrible one for starting over with new characters though, so I'll make an alt who specializes in spellcasting just to do the Mage's Guild quests in Skyrim or one who's good at science for the Old World Blues DLC in Fallout: New Vegas. Before I know it I'm playing the whole thing again, for like the third time.

Great moments in PC gaming are short, bite-sized celebrations of some of our favorite gaming memories.    

Oblivion was my first Elder Scrolls game (I'd briefly tried to play Morrowind on the Xbox but it just didn't take), and I didn't know much of anything about the series before I started playing. Most importantly, it never occurred to me that the Elder Scrolls were actually a thing. It just seemed like a good name for a fantasy game. Elder gods, old paper, yada yada. I get it. So there I was, deeply absorbed in Oblivion and taking orders directly from the Gray Fox, the mysterious leader of the Thieves Guild, when I'm told I need to steal a damn Elder Scroll. From the Imperial Palace. It's that moment when a character in a movie says the title, except instead of groaning (The World is Not Enough) I was full-on, hell yeah into it (Snakes on a Plane). It's really all in the execution. 

It felt like I was about to steal the original Ten Commandments tablets or something, a holy object I had previously assumed was pure allegory. The timing was also perfect. This was my first guild, I was still fairly low-level, and the stakes of this mission conveyed that anything-is-possible sensation we're always chasing in new, still-mysterious game worlds when we haven't found the edges of what you can do. And it was intense as hell, because the Imperial guards could still absolutely wreck me if I got caught.

The thing that really cemented it for me was that I did get caught—or, rather, spotted, which meant I was running in terror from a small army of Imperial guards, the most treasured relic of the Empire tucked away in my inventory. I couldn't stop moving or I was dead. Somehow I made it to the secret chute in the fireplace and survived the massive fall with the special boots I was given for just this occasion. I made it!

There are many ways that mission can go, and it won't impress as much if you can sneak past the guards with ease or survive a huge fall with a shrug. But if you do it early in the game, by the skin of your teeth, it's a thrilling heist and one of Oblivion's most memorable moments.

From momentary vehicle combat to hacking and cards games, minigames have a variety of functions. Sometimes they're great, giving you optional paths to engage with when you're looking for a change of pace, and other times they're crowbarred in to a game's detriment. They can provide further detail to a setting, or they can infuriate and increase the chance of the game being uninstalled within the next ten minutes. 

Minigames are used for all sorts of things, then, as this week's PCG Q&A explores. Let us know your answers to the following in the comments: what are the best and worst minigames? 

Samuel Roberts

Best: Blitzball in Final Fantasy 10

I sometimes think I'm the only person who likes Final Fantasy's underwater football game. I love how it has its own progression and move system, and that you recruit NPCs around the world to join your team, needing to pay them a salary for each match. It heightens the idea that Blitzball is an important part of life in Spira, the game's setting, and means that there's a strong connection between this minigame and the rest of FF10's journey.

Worst: Bioshock hacking

Bioshock's pipe puzzles would've been fun in moderation, but there are so damn many of them that they become arduous by the second half of the game. I like hacking represented as something visually interesting, but after a while they just slow the pace of the game down. Bioshock 2 found a way to keep the game's pace up while you were hacking turrets and the like. I'm not sure it's worse than racing in Pandemic's The Saboteur or the original Mafia, but it's the minigame I've groaned at the most.

Evan Lahti

Best: Phantom Doctrine's conspiracy board 

It's a dead-simple word matching game, but it blends wonderfully with the theme of Phantom Doctrine. The gesture of moving around procedurally-generated clippings and photos, pulling lines of red yarn between them to form connections adds to the pacing of the 40-hour campaign, providing a paperwork break, as odd as that sounds, from occasionally tedious infiltration missions. I talked about this more on a recent Three Moves Ahead podcast.

Worst: Xenonauts' air combat

I'm looking forward to Xenonauts' sequel a lot. Before imitators like Phoenix Point came along, I was calling it "XCOM Grad School." But I really hope that its air combat gets a new interface, or is just a less prominent part of the experience. It's an exhausting distraction, having to click out flight paths for multiple jets, alternating between pausing and real-time to execute commands.

Jarred Walton

Best: Fallout's terminal hacking

The best minigame is a bit of an oxymoron, but I like logic puzzles, and the "figure-out-the-passphrase" game of Mastermind that comes up in Fallout is okay. It's not particularly hard, and it thankfully doesn't come up so often that it becomes completely onerous. But it's never going to become a standalone spinoff like Gwent.

Worst: Oblivion's Speechcraft

One of the worst, and I'm not sure if you can even call it a game as such, is Elder Scrolls Oblivion's manipulation/persuasion minigame where you try to make people like you. The problem being you had to usually loop through the same responses multiple times to 'max out' your reputation with someone, and you could potentially play this game on every person you talk to. It wasn't hard to figure out the rules of the game, and it was old and annoying after the first few times I did it. Unfortunately, there were hundreds more NPCs to persuade, and part of my brain wanted them all to love me.

Chris Livingston

Best: Oblivion's Speechcraft

I'm gonna almost completely disagree with Jarred here. I didn't think highly of it when I first played Oblivion, but darned if I don't miss its Speechcraft minigame. These days I kinda wish there was a standalone version of it, like Gwent. It's absurd, naturally, in that the key to raising someone's opinion of you involves quickly admiring them, bragging about yourself, joking with them, and threatening them. Threatening them! And even though each person hates having some of these things done to them, you still have to do all of them each time, just in a way that minimizes how much they hate it. It's weird and nonsensical but it's also sort of a fun game, watching their expressions change as you hover over a colorful wedge-wheel before making a boast, saying they're pretty, threatening their life, and then dropping a zinger. It's weird and pretty dumb, but I both love it and miss it. If Bethesda released it as an app I would play it daily.

Worst: Bioshock hacking

I do enjoy the little dingaling sound when you successfully hack in Bioshock: it's pleasant and soothing. But I'm not a big fan of Pipe Mania or Pipe Dream or whatever you want to call it. I got tired of it almost immediately, and I don't understand why there are pipes of water flowing through vending machines and sentry guns anyway. I mean, thematically, I get it, but logically, making a machine love you and give you discounts shouldn't involve fixing their plumbing, unless they are actually toilets.

Wes Fenlon

Best: Final Fantasy 9's Tetra Master

I've spent many, many hours across many playthroughs beating Final Fantasy 9's NPCs at the card game Tetra Master, and here's the dirty secret: I still don't understand how this game works. Honestly, I'm convinced no one fully understands Tetra Master, including the people who designed it. And yet it's a blast despite that fact. The core game is all about positioning cards on a grid, with each card representing a monster or character from FF9's extensive bestiary. Cards have differing arrow layouts on their sides and corners that represent attacking, and the object is to turn your opponent's cards to your color by attacking them. Whoever has the most cards of their color at the end wins. It's simple until you get into the strengths of the cards and what the mess of numbers and letters on them mean, at which point you'll have to consult a wiki. And you probably still won't get it. But jockeying for positioning and setting off combos that ripple through multiple cards is somehow even more fun with the danger element of never being quite sure what the hell's going to happen.

Worst: Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic's speeder race

You guys answering BioShock's pipe hacking minigame must never have played KotOR or blocked this from your memory, because it's infinitely shittier. The worst minigame in a good game, by a longshot. Who wants to drive a speeder that controls like a ton of bricks down a drab, completely straight corridor? There aren't even turns. I still can't believe this shipped in the game.

Bo Moore

I'm going to second Wes's Tetra Master suggestion and just say that I love all the Final Fantasy minigames. Chocobo racing and breeding in 7, Triple Triad in 8, Tetra Master in 9, Blitzball in 10. Even the Blitzball manager thing in 10-2 was pretty great.  I'm gonna go against the tide here and say I actually really like Bioshock's pipe minigame. I don't know if I'd call it the best minigame out there, but I didn't totally hate it.

Worst: Nier: Automata's Hacking. It's an overly complex bullet-hell minigame that's often punishingly difficult, made worse by it being forced as the primary mode of combat in the second route through the game. I found it bothersome enough that I actually never finished that second route, even though I'm dying to know the full and complete story of our intrepid androids' fates.

Tom Senior

Best: The Voigt-Kampff test in Westwood's Blade Runner

The beautiful, atmospheric Westwood adventure game had a few plot holes, but it captured the world's atmosphere obsessively, right down to the police gadgets Deckard uses in the original film. I could just have easily chosen the photo enhancer that lets you zoom and pan across pictures to unlock clues—even the sound effects are spot on. Instead I'll nominate the Voight-Kampff test. The machine measures the subject's nervous responses to questions designed to incite revulsion, which replicants find difficult to emulate. You choose your questions and watch the interviewee's eyeball quivering on a dusty monitor as their heart rate changes. It's hard to tell if there's really a system behind the questions, but whenever you put the Voigt Kampff on a character, you really feel like a detective in that incredible world.

Worst: Every racing minigame in games that aren't racers

These sound great on paper. You've got an open world with horses in it, why not have the player race against other horse riders? Hey, people race in cars right? The trouble is they are always trivially easy, or they are a total roadblock. It's really hard to make racing feel fun. The vehicle (or animal) needs to feel awesome. The AI needs to give you just enough challenge without nailing the perfect racing line every time. I can't think of many that come close to being fun. If I want to do some racing, I can go play Forza Horizon 4 instead.

Phil Savage

Best: Gwent in The Witcher 3

A minigame so good it spawned its own standalone game—admittedly one that made sweeping changes to almost every rule, becoming something far more complicated and confusing. The Witcher 3's original card game is the star of CD Projekt Red's RPG, offering a deeper way to interact with the world. It gave me a reason to explore the world outside of the clearly marked quest objectives. A tavern in a small village might be selling some new cards, or at least offer a new opponent to test myself against. It's just deep enough to be the perfect pastime, and just exploitable enough (thanks, spy cards) to let you feel like you're mastering the hobby. In fact, I enjoyed Gwent so much, that I interviewed the team that made it.

Worst: Hacking in Alpha Protocol

Alpha Protocol is a fascinating, compelling, unique RPG, and also a bit broken in some fundamental ways. But nowhere is it worse than it when it asks you to hack a computer. As in real life, hacking involves a basic word search—trying to find specific codes hidden among a nauseating scroll of letters and numbers. But even when you look through the tragic eye puzzle and manage to focus on the bits of it that aren't moving, you then have to actually move two text boxes into position. This is easier said then done because, while the left-hand box uses WASD, the right hand box is controlled by mouse using some of the floatiest movement handling I've ever had the displeasure of trying to complete to a time limit. Sometimes I think Alpha Protocol deserved more recognition than it got. But then I remember the hacking game, and no, it probably didn't.

We've celebrated the work of late concept artist Adam Adamowicz here at PC Gamer before, with a gallery of his work on Skyrim. But he also worked on other Elder Scrolls games including Oblivion, an RPG whose flaws I will happily overlook because it was blessed to have one of the best expansions in videogame history: The Shivering Isles.

The twin islands of Mania and Dementia, ruled over by the Daedric Prince of madness Sheogorath, are bewildering and strange. So are the quests you find there—especially compared to Oblivion's bland and formulaic main questline. A typical job for the court of madness might involve gathering hallucinogens from giant insects to make a delirious poison or taking over a dungeon so you can be the one tormenting adventurers for once. Meanwhile, the landscapes are a mix of murky swampland full of frog-people and psychedelic mushroom forests straight out of Alice in Wonderland. 

And all of it began with the concept art of Adamowicz.

The people of the Shivering Isles are as strange as the land. The Duchess of Dementia wears a frill of spiny, seashell growths, and has sleeves that look like eels or pike caught in the act of devouring her hands. The nobles wear lots of ruffs, giving them a fungal appearance, and while citizens of Mania wear bold colors the citizens of Dementia look so goth they probably shit bats. 

The followers of Order, who oppose Sheogorath, are wrapped in armor that's made of severe, crystalline angles in opposition to the curved, flowing shapes everyone else wears. Where the court is all baroque, decrepit finery, the knights and priests of Order are strict, pointy business.

Adamowicz's monster breakdowns are full of details that make them look like they were drawn by a zoologist studying real animals. A facial close-up of an amphibious Baliwog notes its "tympanic membrane" and "zygomatic arch" and compares its mouth and teeth to that of a moray eel. His vision for the tribal Grummites shows them as indentured servants, some farmhands and others personal attendants chained to Sheogorath, though in the final game they were merely enemies who came out of the swamp whenever it rained.

There's a lot of bonus information and detail in Adamowicz's depictions of the streets of New Sheoth city and the farms around it that were also absent from the finished game. He writes about canals full of tadpoles eating rose petals and after-dinner mints, and funeral urns placed on floating pedestals to prevent haunting because of the belief spirits can't cross water. It makes me wish I could see it again. The idea that The Shivering Isles could have been even stranger if more of Adamowicz's concepts had survived into the finished product—like the woman lifting her robes to reveal a clockwork body, or the flesh golem porter carrying suitcases—is an irresistible one. Maybe we'll see it again via a sidequest in the next Elder Scrolls, or its inevitable expansions. Here's hoping. 

You can see more of Adamowicz's work here.

The timeline of the Elder Scrolls universe is divided into four ages—except there are also two ages before those, and one of them is entirely non-linear and yet somehow manages to contain a sequence of events in which supernatural beings come to existence from nothing. And then, at later points in the timeline, this timeless primordial chaos leaks through into the physical world and recurs, like reality itself is having an acid flashback.

The Elder Scrolls games have a complicated history, is what I'm saying. 

That's part of what makes them appealing to a certain kind of player. They give you the surface stuff of big, freeform open-world fantasy roleplaying, but if you want to dig for it there's more to find. There's even a recurring theme of the game's internal histories being contradictory because they're told from biased viewpoints, as if they're predesigned to be fodder for competing fan theories.

This timeline presents a broad overview of things that happen on the world of Nirn, and also puts the games in order. Each of the mainline Elder Scrolls RPGs is separated by years, sometimes a lot of them, and The Elder Scrolls Online confusingly leaps back in time to fill in a gap. You don't have to know this to enjoy them, but then you don't have to read the books and yet some of us do it anyway. Getting a handle on the history and metaphysics is entirely optional, but it adds to my enjoyment and maybe if you take a dip into it, it'll add to yours too.

The Dawn Era 

There are multiple creation myths in The Elder Scrolls, but the easiest one to grasp is the Anuad, because it comes in a handy children's version. According to the Anuad the first two beings to exist when everything else was void are the brothers Anu and Padomay, who represent order and chaos, light and dark. Where the light and darkness mingle Nir is brought into existence, and both brothers fall in love with her. She loves only Anu, however, and their coupling brings into existence 12 words. In his jealousy Padomay kills Nir and destroys the 12 worlds, but Anu saves enough of their fragments to create one: Nirn.

Anu and Padomay fight a final time, and where Padomay's blood falls it creates the demons or Daedra, while Anu's blood creates the stars, and where their blood mixes the gods or Aedra are made. That's the kid's book version.

Among the first of those gods is Lorkhan, a trickster, who convinces the Aedra to create the mortal plane, while the Daedra go off to make their own planes within Oblivion. Some of the Aedra realize Lorkhan isn't being upfront about the cost of this creation, that they'll have to sacrifice much of their own power in the act. They leave for Aetherius, a plane of pure magic, allowing magicka to leak into the world through the holes their departure leaves. Other Aedra step back to resume their godhood, becoming the Divines. According to human myths the gods then create mortals, while the elves believe some Aedra stay permanently to sacrifice their immortality and become their ancestors. 

But before that, the Aedra convene to determine how Lorkhan should be punished for tricking them. Akatosh, dragon god of time, builds the Adamantine Tower on the continent of Tamriel to be their courthouse. Lorkhan's punishment is to have his heart torn out, and it forms the Red Mountain on the island of Vvardenfell.

That's just one version of the story of course. The in-game book called The Monomyth is a handy collection of competing creation stories.  

The Merethic Era 

Known as the Merethic Era because it's dominated by the Mer, a.k.a. the elves, this period of 2,500 years begins with the construction of the Adamantine Tower and ends with the founding of the Camoran Dynasty. In between, the elves travel to the continent of Tamriel when their homeland of Aldmeri is lost, settling in different areas. The Dwemer take up residence underground, the Altmer on Summerset Isle, the Bosmer in the forests, the Chimer (who later become the Dunmer) in Morrowind, and the Ayleids take slaves from the local human population and found the Ayleid Empire. The Orsimer are corrupted by Daedra and become the orcs, while humans from the northern continent of Atmora also emigrate to Tamriel under the leadership of Ysgramor. 

Ysgramor's creation of the runic language allows human recorded history to begin, ushering in the First Era and some actual dates. 

The First Era

0

King Eplear unites the Bosmer wood elves, founds the nation of Valenwood, and begins the Camoran Dynasty. 

143 

Harald, a descendent of Ysgramor, is crowned first High King of the Nords and declares Windhelm the capital of his nation, Skyrim. 

240 

High King Vrage the Gifted of Skyrim begins a campaign of conquest in various elven lands, taking High Rock, all of Morrowind except Vvardenfell, and parts of Cyrodiil, most of which is at this time held by the elven Ayleid Empire. 

243 

Human slaves in the Ayleid Empire rebel and take control of the White-Gold Tower at its centre. Their leader Alessia declares herself first Empress of the Cyrodillic Empire, goes on to formalize worship of the Divines, and is later declared a saint.

369 

A dispute over who will be crowned High King of the Nords leads to the War of Succession, and the Nordic territories outside Skyrim take this opportunity to begin struggling for independence. 

416 

The Chimer and Dwemer unite to drive the Nords out of Morrowind. 

700 

When the Chimer learn the Dwemer are constructing a golem called the Numidium powered by the Heart of Lorkhan and that this "brass god" is intended to become a blasphemous new deity, the peace between them is broken. They go to war at the Battle of Red Mountain, during which the Dwemer vanish—an event that's never explained. 

The Chimer lord Indoril Nerevar, favored of the Daedric Prince Azura, dies under mysterious circumstances, for which Azura curses their people to be transformed into the Dunmer or dark elves. (There's a lot going on here and you should honestly just play Morrowind for a much fuller explanation.)

792 

The land of Yokuda is destroyed and the survivors flee to Hammerfell, where they eventually become known as the Redguards. 

950 

The city of Orsinium, capital of the orcs, is attacked by a union of neighboring kingdoms. The siege lasts 30 years, after which the city finally falls and is razed. 

1029 

High Rock joins the Alessian Empire. 

1200

A monotheistic sect of anti-elf extremists called the Alessian Order, who have dominated the Alessian Empire since the fourth century, attempt a ritual to separate the elven god Auriel from Akatosh, the Dragon God of Time (the two are closely connected, and possibly just aspects of the same being viewed by different cultures). This goes so wrong that time shatters and the non-linearity of the Dawn Era recurs in an event called the Dragon Break. For 1,008 years time ceases to function properly.

This is all just a theory, and an alternate theory states that a clerical error left official records blank during this period.

2321 

Western Cyrodiil attempts to gain independence from the Alessian Empire in a decade-long conflict called the War of Righteousness.

2703 

Invaders from the land of Akavir land in Tamriel, forcing Cyrodiil to unite against them, forging the Second Empire and beginning the Reman Dynasty. 

2714 

The Second Empire conquers Valenwood. 

2811 

Reman II goes to war against the Argonian lizardfolk, and their home of Black Marsh becomes an Imperial province. 

2920 

A truce between Morrowind and the Empire is broken when a Dunmer fortress is sacked. In response the dark elf assassins guild, the Morag Tong, murder Reman III and his son. An Akaviri Potentate takes over and declares the end of the Reman Dynasty and the beginning of the Second Era. 

The Second Era

230

The Mages Guild is formed by Vanus Galerion after he leaves an older magical fraternity called the Psijic Order. Galerion opposes the practice of necromancy, and proposes to make magical items and potions available to the public for a price.

283 

Potentate Versidue-Shaie declares martial law across the Empire, beginning 37 years of warfare that leaves the Imperial Legion the only military force of any strength in Tamriel.

309 

The Khajiit cat-people found the province of Elsweyr by uniting two minor kingdoms. 

320 

In response to a rise in banditry due to the absence of military forces beyond the Legion, the forerunner of the Fighters Guild is founded. 

324 

The Morag Tong assassinate Potentate Versidue-Shaie. 

430 

Potentate Savirien-Chorak and all his heirs are assassinated, bringing the Second Empire to an end. Historians dispute who was responsible but what do you want, three guesses?

431 

No longer protected by the Empire, the rebuilt orc capital of Orsinium is sacked again, this time by the Bretons and Redguards.

567 

The Daggerfall Covenant unites High Rock, Hammerfell, and Orsinium, and the orcs are given the right to rebuild their capital one more time. 

572 

A second Akaviri invasion captures Windhelm in Skyrim but is defeated after being trapped between the Dunmer and a united force of Nords and Argonians. Morrowind, Skyrim, and Black Marsh sign the Ebonheart Pact to make this temporary alliance permanent. 

580 

Elsweyr, Valenwood, and the Summerset Isles unite as the Aldmeri Dominion.

583 

Start date of The Elder Scrolls Online. 

852 

Tiber Septim begins the Tiber Wars in an attempt to unite the nations of Tamriel and form the Third Empire.  

864 

Start date of The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard. 

896 

Tiber Septim uses a rebuilt Numidium to complete his conquest of Tamriel, destroying the golem afterwards. Then he declares the Second Era over. 

The Third Era

38 

Tiber Septim dies. Followers of Talos believe he ascends to godhood. 

119 

Pelagius III, later known as Pelagius the Mad, becomes emperor. (He's worth a mention just because his hip bone forms the basis of a fun sidequest in Skyrim.) 

172 

Start date of An Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire. 

249 

The Camoran Usurper invades Valenwood. 

399 

Start date of The Elder Scrolls: Arena. 

405 

Start date of The Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall.

417 

The Numidium is rebuilt again. Something about this powerful artifact's use results in another brief Dragon Break, called The Warp in the West, during which the Numidium is seen in six different places at once, fulfilling the aims of different factions. (This conveniently makes all six potential endings of Daggerfall canon simultaneously.) 

427 

Start date of The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind.

433 

Start date of The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion. 

The Fourth Era

5 

In Vvardenfell the large rock containing the Ministry of Truth that hovers over Vivec falls, devastating the city and causes floods and landslides. The Red Mountain erupts. 

22

The elven supremacist faction called the Thalmor take over Summerset Isle, and the high elves leave the Empire. Within a decade they take Valenwood as well, beginning a new Aldmeri Dominion. 

98 

During the 'Void Nights' both moons, Masser and Secunda, vanish from the sky. The Khajiit, who are bound to the Lunar Lattice and whose children have adult forms determined by the phase of the moons they're born under, are particularly distraught. When the Thalmor take credit for the moons' return, Elsweyr agrees to join the resurgent Aldmeri Dominion. 

171 

The Aldmeri Dominion demand tribute from the Empire, as well as the banning of Talos worship, the ceding of a significant portion of Hammerfell, and the disbanding of the Emperor's order of spies and bodyguards, the Blades. Emperor Titus II refuses all demands, and the Great War begins. (The singleplayer campaign of The Elder Scrolls: Legends takes place during this war.)

175 

The Aldmeri Dominion and the Empire sign a treaty called the White-Gold Concordat, agreeing to enforce a ban on Talos worship.  

201 

Start date of The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim.

If you managed to make it all the way through this, why not follow it up with Major events in the Fallout timeline?