Julian Lefay is a programmer, video game designer, and musician, best known for his work on '' The Elder Scrolls: Arena'', '' The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall'', and '' An Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire''. Lefay was in an

electropop Electropop is a popular music fusion genre combining elements of the electronic and pop styles. It has been described as a variant of synth-pop with emphasis on a hard electronic sound. The genre was developed in the 1980s and saw a rev ...

band named Russia Heat, who charted with their single, "Tell Me Your Name". Early in his work, he worked on some PC,

Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers produced by Commodore International, Commodore from 1985 until the company's bankruptcy in 1994, with production by others afterward. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16-b ...

and

NES The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is an 8-bit home video game console developed and marketed by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan on 15 July 1983 as the and was later released as the redesigned NES in several test markets in the ...

projects, programming and composed music for '' Where's Waldo?'' and ''

Sword of Sodan Sword of Sodan is a hack and slash video game released for the Amiga in 1988 by Discovery Software, which also commissioned a port for the Apple IIGS (but not made public until 2018). A scaled-down version for the Sega Genesis was released in 1 ...

'', among others. Sometimes referred to as the "Father of ''

The Elder Scrolls ''The Elder Scrolls'' is a series of action role-playing games, action role-playing video games primarily developed by Bethesda Game Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks. The series focuses on Nonlinear gameplay, free-form gameplay in an ...

''", he joined

Bethesda Softworks Bethesda Softworks LLC is an American video game publisher based in Rockville, Maryland. The company was founded by Christopher Weaver in 1986 as a Division (business), division of Media Technology Limited. In 1999, it became a subsidiary of Z ...

shortly after the company's creation in 1987. He held the role of Chief Engineer there for many years, and guided the company through the creation of some of its seminal games, such as '' The Terminator 2029'', ''Arena'', ''Daggerfall'' and ''Battlespire''. ''The Elder Scrolls'' deity Julianos is based on Julian. He worked briefly on '' The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind'' as a contractor after quitting Bethesda in 1998. He also worked at

Sega is a Japanese video game company and subsidiary of Sega Sammy Holdings headquartered in Tokyo. It produces several List of best-selling video game franchises, multi-million-selling game franchises for arcade game, arcades and video game cons ...

briefly and was the Vice President of Development at Blockbuster for a time. He was briefly involved in the production of ''

Skullgirls ''Skullgirls'' is a 2012 fighting game, fighting video game developed by Reverge Labs and published by Autumn Games, originally released digitally for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 and ported to various other home and portable systems afterwards. ...

''. He has said that he does not have a deep love for the products or the jobs he performs today, but he cares greatly for his work and precision in his programming. He implied that he has not visited the Bethesda Studios office in years and that he lives only a few minutes from it. He has stated the house implementation in ''Daggerfall'' was done late and was therefore underdeveloped. He was unhappy with the lack of furniture and other assets that did not make it into the final game. In 2019, Lefay co-founded the

independent game An indie video game or indie game (short for independent video game) is a video game created by individuals or smaller development teams without the financial and technical support of a large game publisher, in contrast to most "AAA" (triple-A ...

studio OnceLost Games with former

developers Ted Peterson and Vijay Lakshman and announced they would be working on a new

open world In video games, an open world is a virtual world in which the Gamer, player can approach objectives freely, as opposed to a world with more linear and structured gameplay. Notable games in this category include ''The Legend of Zelda (video game ...

role-playing game A role-playing game (sometimes spelled roleplaying game, or abbreviated as RPG) is a game in which players assume the roles of player character, characters in a fictional Setting (narrative), setting. Players take responsibility for acting out ...

called ''

The Wayward Realms ''The Wayward Realms'' is an upcoming open world action role-playing video game developed by OnceLost Games. The game's development is being led by Ted Peterson and Julian Lefay, both former Bethesda Softworks developers best known for their rol ...

'', which would serve as a

spiritual successor A spiritual successor (sometimes called a spiritual sequel) is a product or fictional work that is similar to, or directly inspired by, another previous product or work, but (unlike a traditional prequel or sequel) does not explicitly continue th ...

to ''Daggerfall''. Although initially offered $8 million by a major publisher, the team rejected the offer as they believed they could not make the game for less than $12 million. On May 30th 2024, a

Kickstarter Kickstarter, PBC is an American Benefit corporation, public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York City, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative project ...

Campaign for the project was launched with the goal of reaching $500,000 to fund one year of development on an early access build, which could then be shopped around to publishers.

References

External links

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Julian Lefay
at GiantBomb 1965 births Bethesda Softworks employees Danish expatriates in the United States Danish male musicians Danish video game composers Danish video game designers Living people Video game programmers {{videogame-bio-stub