Co-lead designer on The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim and former Bethesda developer Kurt Kuhlmann has revealed that the main setting for The Elder Scrolls 6 was agreed upon all the way back during the development of Fallout 4. In an interview with PCGamer, he noted that, while he doesn’t know if it’s still the case, a consensus was reached at the time.
“From when we were talking about it way back in the Fallout 4 timeframe, there was a sort of consensus amongst a few people that were talking about it,” he said, marking these conversations as having happened before the 2015 release of the post-apocalyptic RPG.
“We had an idea, but it was more of a consensus, like, ‘OK, where should the next game be?’ And the people that were talking all agreed. It was not an argument. It was like, well, obviously, it should be here. We were more in the feel of it, in the setting; there was no story involved yet.”
Ultimately, however, Kuhlmann admits to not really knowing what the setting of The Elder Scrolls 6 will be, owing to the fact that “I haven’t been involved in that level of the story side of things since Skyrim.”
Bethesda has been quiet since it first teased The Elder Scrolls 6 all the way back in 2018, and the video didn’t really reveal much either aside from the fact that it will feature a vast landscape with mountains on the horizon.
Kuhlmann had previously spoken about his concept for The Elder Scrolls franchise after Skyrim, which would involve a cliffhanger ending for The Elder Scrolls 6 that would then build towards The Elder Scrolls 7. He compared the idea to classic Star Wars film The Empire Strikes Back.
“I had in my mind that TES6 was going to be like The Empire Strikes Back,” he said. His concept would involve Thalmor supremacists assuming the role of antagonists for The Elder Scrolls 7. The entire build-up for this story would take place in The Elder Scrolls 6, with the story revolving around the group’s ambitions to conquer all of Tamriel.
This kind of ending, he acknowledged, wouldn’t be allowed in a Bethesda game, calling it “completely unfeasible” thanks to the studio’s longer game development cycles. “That’s not a good way to end a game and say, yeah, we’ll see you in 10, 15 years,” he said.
Kuhlmann also opened up about how his departure from Bethesda happened due to a cultural shift in how the studio made its games, along with the fact that he wouldn’t get to work on The Elder Scrolls 6 as lead designer. Describing the cultural shift as feeling “more bureaucratic,” Kuhlmann said, “The expectation was… your job can’t be also making content if you’re actually managing that scope of the project.”
In December, director Todd Howard confirmed that development on The Elder Scrolls 6 has been “progressing really well”. He went on to note that most of the studio is working on the open-world RPG, and that Bethesda often tends to have long pre-production periods to ensure “that we feel good about them. And it’s a process.”
