In an interview with Entertainment Weekly celebrating the 25th anniversary of Xbox, Bethesda director Todd Howard was asked about the development progress of The Elder Scrolls 6, especially in light of its absence during Xbox’s showcase from earlier this month.
While he didn’t go into too many details, he referred to it as “our biggest project right now” and has confirmed that it’s what “the majority of the studio” is working on. He went on to say, “We know we need to get it right, and it’s been a long time.”
The fact that most of Bethesda is currently working on The Elder Scrolls 6 should come as no surprise, since Howard had already spoken about this back in March.
“The majority of this building is working on The Elder Scrolls 6,” he said. “It’s amazing for us to come back to it. I gotta be honest, right? Being in that world after not developing in Elder Scrolls – it’s so different than Starfield, so different than Fallout – it feels great for us.”
At the time, he also discussed how Bethesda uses The Elder Scrolls and Fallout games as follow-ups to each other with regard to the engine improvements each title tends to bring with it.
“We feel we’re in a really good place with these franchises,” he explained. “Obviously, we’re around Fallout stuff as well, and we feel good about that. The trick is still we have three big audiences, and in some ways, three big franchises – and in a lot of ways, the franchise is the studio. Skyrim is somewhat the sequel to Fallout 3. Fallout 4 is somewhat our follow-up to Skyrim.”
Aside from Howard’s general silence on the subject, earlier this month, Xbox chief content officer Matt Booty was asked a similar question. He noted that the title is “coming along well,” and that it will be showcased “at the right time.”
“I would say one of the more challenging balancing acts of someone in a job like mine is balancing that you want to go show the world all the cool stuff you’re working on, and you want to get them excited early, but we also know that we want to wait till the right moment,” he said.
And when you decide to show it, you want it to be the best you’ve got. And also, that when you show the game, you’re also giving them a promise of, hey, it’s coming soon. So, I can tell you, having visited Bethesda and sat with Todd and seen ‘Elder Scrolls’ playing, it looks amazing, and it’s coming along well. And we’ll make sure to announce it and really reveal it at the right time.”
Howard had previously confirmed that The Elder Scrolls 6 is being developed with Creation Engine 3 – Bethesda’s in-house game engine that it has iterated upon for more than a decade. The last iteration of the game engine – Creation Engine 2 – was seen in Starfield. The director had noted that the studio had spent “the last several years” on continuing the engine’s development to make sure that it could handle the needs of The Elder Scrolls 6.
