The Elder Scrolls 6 director Todd Howard has revealed that most of the developers at Bethesda Game Studios are currently working on the upcoming RPG. In a roundtable interview, as caught by GamesRadar, Howard also spoke about how The Elder Scrolls 6 is going to be quite different from previous titles by the studio, like Starfield and Fallout.
“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.”
He went on to note the fact that, in technical terms, games across The Elder Scrolls and Fallout franchises tend to be follow-ups to one another. For example, he brought up how The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim was a follow-up to Fallout 3, since the fantasy RPG brought in several engine improvements. Similarly, Fallout 4 then served as yet another follow-up.
“We feel we’re in a really good place with these franchises,” he said. “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.”
While there is “a lot of crossover” among fans of these franchises, Howard also believes that “there’s definitely people who strongly, strongly prefer one over the other, which is totally understandable.” These preferences tend to come from the fact that the games have “very different vibes,” both in terms of gameplay as well as in development. He also noted that the fantasy setting of The Elder Scrolls 6 offers “something very romantic” thanks to “a world you feel you can almost step out into.”
In another interview, Howard also spoke about how Bethesda learned plenty of lessons on how to handle its in-house Creation Engine during the development of Starfield. This, he noted, helped when the studio was upgrading the engine from version 2 to 3 while developers were actively working on The Elder Scrolls 6.
“I will say the way we approached the engine work – we’ve done a much better job of it this time,” he said. “With Starfield, it was made on Creative Engine 2, which was a big change from the original engine. We have Creation Engine 3 for Elder Scrolls 6. It started with 2.”
He described the process of this engine upgrade as being “an upheaval for the team trying to make stuff,” and said that it was like “just pulling the rug out” from under the developers’ feet while they were actively working on it. Ultimately, however, the team is seemingly satisfied with the upgrade.
“This wasn’t me saying it; everyone on the team was like, ‘We have to handle this engine updating and change much better so that we can be productive.’ And I’m giving the team an A+ there. We have handled that better than we ever have,” he said.
