Bethesda’s Todd Howard has once again commented on the decision to announce The Elder Scrolls 6 all the way back in 2018. The game was announced at E3 that year alongside Starfield, and just after Fallout 76 was revealed in May 2018.
The timing of those reveals played a key role in why The Elder Scrolls 6 was announced around the same time. Fallout 76 was the franchise’s first stab at online multiplayer, while Starfield was a brand-new IP. Announcing The Elder Scrolls 6 at the same time was a purposeful decision to help core fans understand a more traditional Bethesda game was coming … eventually.
Howard would not have done it this way if he got to decide, however.
“When you’re going to do something new, everyone is going to ask, ‘What about Elder Scrolls 6?!’ ‘What about a single-player game?!’ We did it that way, but it’s not my preference,” he told IGN.
He went on to joke: “Just pretend we didn’t announce it. It doesn’t exist. No one has heard a word.”
Also in the interview, Howard said he now feels “very” cautious about announcing games so early in their development.
“I like to say, when you go and press play, when you’re about to play a game, what do you already know? What’s in your head? What’s your excitement level? What’s your expectations? And then back up from there. I prefer not to talk about stuff. I like to compress that moment from when you hear about a game until when you can play it. Those would be on top of each other if I had my way, every time. That isn’t necessarily the best thing to do with every game. Sometimes you need to inform people or there’s business considerations,” he said.
Howard went on to say decisions around when to announce new games is something that doesn’t always come easily to Bethesda. “We struggle with the balance because our fans want to know,” he said, referencing future projects.
Howard previously said he often wonders if it was the right thing to announce The Elder Scrolls 6 so early. “I have asked myself that a lot,” he said. “I don’t know. I probably would’ve announced it more casually.”
For Fallout 4, Bethesda announced the game in June 2015 and launched the game about five months later in November of that year. Before that, Skyrim was announced in December 2010 before launching less than a year later. The playbook has changed in recent times, though, as Bethesda announced Starfield in 2018 and launched the game in September 2023.
Howard’s comments line up with what former Bethesda designer Bruce Nesmith said. He previously talked about how fans were coming with “pitchforks and torches” about the next game in the Elder Scrolls series. Nesmith said this compelled Howard to say, “Yes, we are going to do The Elder Scrolls 6. I promise you. It’s for real. It’ll happen.”
The Elder Scrolls 6 remains largely shrouded in mystery. But Howard recently said Fallout 76 and Starfield were “creative detours” for the company, promising that The Elder Scrolls 6 will go back to Bethesda’s roots. “We are coming back to that classic style that we’ve missed, that we know really, really well,” he said.
Another far-off Bethesda game in the works now is Fallout 5, which Howard himself first confirmed was coming back in 2022 and still has no official details. Recently, a former Bethesda developer said the studio might outsource Fallout 5 to another studio.
