Completely agree, I would rather wait for a good product than – as you said – a cash grab.

If TES6 is as a big of a project than by all means, we all remember how well received the game was, but not the bugs. And with a new engine we can (hopefully) expect better, more advanced gameplay, something that really makes it fun, like Skyrim was for it’s time – well to me at least.

With everyone pushing for AI, not just the gaming industry, but almost every industry. Huawei has announced in September that their Kirin 970 SoC has AI capabilities, basically the first phone processor with integrated AI. Invidia, AMD, Intel are also going to release GPU’s, CPUs etc. with AI capabilities.

Ubisoft even has a department that’s going to share/exchange their AI tech with various other field’s.

A fire that will spread realistically thanks to the AI, water floods, electricity running through the body, water etc. Imagine a “true” live world, with NPCs being run by an AI and not
limited by prerecordings, perhaps even the capabilities to talk with the NPCs via a headset?! All of that maybe a “bit” far fetched, but considering the push with the tech, I wouldn’t say it’s as far fetched as people my think.

Especially if the game is built around the next iteration of consoles at least as the HW (jaguars) is not really up to it and well, with next gen HW having AI dedicated chips in them.

Well sure ground up would take five years, but who knows how many years in to development they already are. Only thing you can know for certain is they have done more than they are letting on, like they always do. Still whether it’s three years or slightly more, rather wait for the actual passion project than push that true evolution back with a cash grab now.

Um, except that your numbers are off: it’s going to be at least five years for the next game–2 or 3 would be rushed.

Yea, I remember him saying that and thinking, I’d way rather have an awesome game in two or three years than a rushed game now and have to wait five years for a true successor to Skyrim. Bethesda won’t let us down. The wait will be justified. They also said they could sit down and talk about exactly what ES6 will be if they wanted to.. which of course they won’t because it would be painful to know how awesome the game will be before we get it.

BGS has two other big games they are currently working on, so perhaps they have a “skeleton” crew doing a few things, ideas and such, but small stuff, while the rest of the team is working on the other games. Mind you, TES5 was worked on by 100 people, which was the biggest development team for any of their games.

At last years e3 (2016) Todd Howard (the main guy behind most of the TES and FO games) said this:

“We think very long term. We’re not a developer that’s going to, like,
rush something like this out [or do that] with any of our games. When
you think of the future of that kind of game, we have a pretty good idea
of what it’s going to be and it’s just going to take technology and
time that really we don’t have necessarily right now.”

With the technology comment he could be referring to the HW and/or the software aka engine, and considering that FOV4 is based on a modified Skyrim Engine which is itself based on Gamebryo a (relatively) very old engine, that’s quite the case to be made. And building game engines from the ground up is a long and quite expensive prospect especially with some of the ideas they might have for a future game… a far more advanced AI, a far better physics system etc.