Bethesda Breaks Silence on The Elder Scrolls 6

The Elder Scrolls 6 was announced five years ago. Five years later it's still in pre-production, and there's been no follow-up trailer or anything other than the occasional confirmation that the game is still happening. The reason it's made little progress is because Bethesda Game Studios is focused on Starfield, which releases next month. After Starfield is out, Bethesda Game Studios will shift its focus to The Elder Scrolls 6. The problem with this is that even when this happens the game will be anywhere from three to six years away. At bare minimum there will be eight years between the game's reveal and release, with a decent probability the time between the two events will be double digits. All of this begs the question: why did Bethesda announce it so early? 

Well, at the time Bethesda Game Studios director Todd Howard suggested it was because everyone was asking about it and Bethesda wanted to confirm it was happening. That said, it sounds like Howard has some regret about revealing the game so early. During a recent interview, and when asked if he thinks it was revealed too early, Howard suggests he may have announced the game more casually if he had a do-over. 

"I have asked myself that a lot. I don't know. I probably would've announced it more casually," said Howard. The Bethesda Game Studios director also added the following when asked what he would like to achieve with the game: "It's like... I don't want to answer, but I want to be polite. I will say that we want it to fill that role of the ultimate fantasy-world simulator. And there are different ways to accomplish that given the time that has passed."

It's difficult to know what should and shouldn't be made of the latter quote. It doesn't say much, but it does suggest Bethesda has ambitions with it that go beyond just creating Skyrim 2.0 because a Skyrim 2.0 would not be the "ultimate fantasy-world simulator."

H/T, GQ.