Bethesda creative director Todd Howard knows the wait for the next Elder Scrolls RPG has been “too long.” But in a new interview, he once again asked fans to be patient, and hinted that maybe Elder Scrolls 6 or some other Bethesda game in the future might shadow-drop without warning.
In an interview with GQ Magazine mainly focused on the 10th anniversary of Fallout 4, Howard talked about the studio’s next game: The Elder Scrolls VI. First announced officially in 2018 via an E3 teaser, this next entry in the RPG franchise will be the first sequel since 2011’s Skyrim. And while Howard admits working on Starfield after Fallout 4 was a nice “reset” for the team, he also acknowledges that the gap between sequels is too big.
“I do like to have a break between them, where it isn’t like a ‘plus one’ sequel,” said Howard. “I think it’s also good for an audience to have a break – The Elder Scrolls has been too long, let’s be clear. But we wanted to do something new with Starfield. We needed a creative reset.” Howard also made it clear that The Elder Scrolls 6 is still a “long way off.”
“I’m preaching patience. I don’t want fans to feel anxious,” Howard told the outlet. Previously, the creative director suggested that Bethesda had announced the new RPG too early.
Elder Scrolls 6 (or something else…) might get shadow-dropped
Elsewhere in the interview, after admitting that Fallout 4‘s dialogue system wasn’t well received by fans, Howard talked about letting some folks who donated to Make-A-Wish play Elder Scrolls 6 early via a recent playtesting session. And yes, Bethesda is playtesting the RPG a lot now as it’s the studio’s next big project. But it seems like Howard isn’t a fan of spending years and years teasing and talking about Bethesda’s next game.
I like to just announce stuff and release it,” said Howard. “My perfect version–and I’m not saying this is going to happen–is that it’s going to be a while and then, one day, the [The Elder Scrolls 6] will just appear.”
When the interviewer pointed out that Bethesda shadow-dropped The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered earlier this year, and it was a big hit, Howard vaguely teased: “You might say that was a test run. It worked out well.”
Now, I don’t actually think Bethesda and Xbox will just launch the next mainline Elder Scrolls game without a marketing push. That would be wild. But I do think Oblivion Remastered proved that many of Bethesda’s past games are popular enough already that you don’t need to do much marketing to get people excited about a new version of a past classic. And over the last year or two, we’ve heard rumors and reports of a Fallout 3 remaster being cooked up. Is Howard’s answer here alluding to that rumored remaster dropping without warning in the near future? Perhaps. We know more Fallout projects are coming. Just what those are and when we should expect them are still officially unknown.
