Todd Howard might just be wishing Bethesda had taken its time in revealing the existence of The Elder Scrolls 6 to the world.
Coming hot on the heels of Nate Purkeypile’s assertion that the reveal was to ensure the studio didn’t draw the ire of its fans, and Howard’s own assertion that he liked the direction the game was taking just last month, a recent interview with IGN suggests that you might have to wait a little longer for it.
Although Starfield’s upcoming major update was the subject of that conversation, Howard fielded a question about The Elder Scrolls 6 that we believe he knew was coming. “Just pretend we didn’t announce it. Doesn’t exist. No one’s heard a word.”
However, Howard was pretty chatty about how it can be tricky to find the perfect time to announce a game to sustain the excitement for it. The upcoming addition to a franchise that Bethesda is famous for seems to be doing quite well, although those among you who can’t wait to get your hands on it may disagree.
“I like to say, I always start with, when you go and press play, 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 I back up from there. I prefer not to talk about stuff until then. I like to compress that moment where you hear about a game to 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, and there’s business considerations and et cetera, et cetera.
“If you look back at this Fallout 76, Starfield, Elder Scrolls 6 announcement, that was really about informing our audience, because when you’re going to do something new, everyone’s going to ask, ‘What about Elder Scrolls 6? What about a single player game?’ And we did it that way, but it’s not my preference. And I will say, look, we struggle with the balance, because our fans want to know, they’re amazing and saying like, ‘Well, what are you doing?’
“And, well, we’re working on a lot of stuff. I think if you look at the scale of our studio, we could have 10 times the amount of people to do all this. We’re doing so much, and it’s just finding the right times to tell everybody about it. Look at Starfield today. I feel like the Starfield audience has been, ‘What about us?’ And we had sort of balance with like, ‘Hey, the end of the Fall was for Fallout, the TV show,’ with everything we were doing. And we knew that we were just going to save the Starfield stuff to give it its spotlight during this time. But yeah. It’s a balance.”
That’s probably not what anyone who loves the fantasy franchise might have wanted to hear, least of all us, but it’s probably best to let the talented folks at Bethesda cook at their own pace and bring us a sequel that blows us away. That’s definitely going to make the long wait for this one worth it.
Until then, PS5 players can look forward to the launch of Starfield on April 7th while all platforms get the massive Free Lanes update and new Terran Armada expansion. Head here for everything you should know about both.
