It sounds like it would have been impossible on paper, but Bethesda's beloved Elder Scrolls series almost released on a handheld gaming device. Footage of a prototype version of The Elder Scrolls Travels: Oblivion appeared online earlier today, and it looked surprisingly great.

Too bad ZeniMax, the parent company of Bethesda, doesn't want you to see it. Despite the footage being from a nearly-decade-old cancelled game for the now-defunct PlayStation Portable (PSP), the publisher of the Elder Scrolls series slapped videos detailing the prototype game with copyright claims. The Elder Scrolls Travels: Oblivion isn't ever going to be finished, but ZeniMax still doesn't want fans to see what could have been.

That's disappointing, especially given how promising the game looked. One might expect a handheld version of Oblivion, a massive open-world RPG, to run rather poorly on a far less-powerful piece of gaming hardware, but the footage showed otherwise. A key reason the game looks like it could have worked was that it wasn't a port of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Instead, it was more of a spin-off. Players would explore a hub world and then travel to different cities across the world of Tamriel during the same timeframe as the main entry in the franchise, shutting down Oblivion portals in their wake. The game would take players to cities like Daggerfall, Moonguard, Glenpoint and more via crystals that would teleport players to their location.

The Elder Scrolls Travels: Oblivion wasn't a true open-world experience, but that likely wouldn't have mattered to many. It was said to have featured a combat system similar to that of its Xbox 360 and PS3 counterpart, hundreds of quests, NPCs and much more. Though it's no longer available, footage of the game came from PtoPOnline, a YouTube channel dedicated to preserving cancelled and prototype versions of games. The user behind PtoPOnline, who goes by the name of Borman on gaming forum NeoGAF, says the prototype was far better than the majority of cancelled game projects they've played.

"You would have figured that it was awful," Borman writes. "But it wasnt. It was really good. It looked good. And sure, it was early, but Ive [sic] played many worse cancelled games, and few that were better."

Supposedly, the game was cancelled due to budget concerns and the waning popularity of the PSP at the time. Though the video footage has been taken down, you can check out some images from the prototype below.