Eight years is a long time for anything, especially in the gaming industry. BioWare went from shipping a questionable spin-off to effectively capsizing and massively reducing its staff. FromSoftware shipped not one but two universally acclaimed games, an equally acclaimed expansion, a great new Armored Core, and even a multiplayer title. There have been three mainline Monster Hunter titles released during that time period, and if Final Fantasy 7 Revelation is released by next Spring, it will have delivered the entire remake trilogy in about seven years.
However, in the here and now, we celebrate a different occasion. It’s been eight years since Bethesda Game Studios revealed that The Elder Scrolls 6 was in development. Almost seven years after the release of Skyrim, the next chapter in the epic fantasy RPG series was finally upon us. That one teaser would be dissected for a good long while, as fans theorized and opined. Will we finally venture to Hammerfell? Maybe Highrock? Perhaps both or somewhere else entirely?
Eight years later, let’s check in on what XBOX chief content officer Matt Booty had to say about the game to Variety.
“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.”
Now, there’s more context to be had from his overall answer. Before this, Booty said that, “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. 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.”
That is all understandable and realistic on the surface, but it also discounts the fact that it was announced eight years ago. Eight years later, we still don’t know the official name. We haven’t seen any gameplay or learned when it’s releasing. Remember when former Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer said it was likely five-plus years away back in June 2023? More than halfway past that mark, and it’s looking like it could be another five years.
Where the hell is The Elder Scrolls 6? Why is it taking so long?
We’d be remiss not to mention that Bethesda has been busy with other things, like re-releasing Fallout 4 and Skyrim, and breaking their mods for the community. Or Starfield, which itself took an eye-watering eight years to develop, meaning it was in the works when the studio was busy wrapping up Fallout 4. Granted, it ultimately removed a lot in terms of combat and weapon options, but I digress. We’ve certainly dogpiled enough on Todd Howard’s radical space adventure for a good long while.
So what is happening with The Elder Scrolls 6? Well, Howard said last December that it’s “progressing really well,” though he wishes it could go faster (yes, this was last December). It definitely has more trees than Skyrim, which was confirmed a few days later. And before that in November, he revealed that it was still a long way off, though it passed the “quite playable milestone” in July 2025.
There has been more recent information, from the team confirming that it’s developed on Creation Engine 3 and that they’re “happy where it’s headed,” and that the “majority of this building” – referring to Bethesda’s HQ in Maryland – is working on it. But on the other hand, Howard is now only half-joking that you should “pretend that we didn’t announce it.”
Which is funny because if you go back to what former SVP of marketing Pete Hines said in 2018, the announcement was made (alongside Starfield) for the sake of transparency. Why would they need that, effectively defusing any “hysteria” around what was next? Well, because Bethesda had Fallout 76 coming up and it didn’t want fans thinking that it was just working on multiplayer games.
Yes, that’s really it.
All that aside, however, Howard and the rest of the development team have made it clear that they want to take their time with the game. When factoring in the new management at XBOX and their recent moves, there’s probably an incentive to present this as a major exclusive somewhere down the line. It may even have looked at Starfield and decided that Bethesda needs to move beyond it, delivering something comparable to its best work.
All of that is a noble endeavor indeed, but unless Creation Engine 3 is a massive leap over its predecessor, which is what Starfield is built on, more time spent means more risks of Bethesda’s design and technology becoming outdated. Look at Fallout 4 and how it felt archaic next to games like The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.
It’s also been made clear that Bethesda is operating with a different set of expectations. While immersion definitely formed much of Skyrim’s appeal, it was also several side quests and the overall world that helped it stand out. The studio’s writing has only gotten worse over the past eight years – the jury’s out on whether The Elder Scrolls 6 will really change that. So can Creation Engine 3 really carry the series forward in terms of gameplay or world design?
This probably isn’t even a question of the engine but what the developer wants to achieve. After all, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 offers a pretty immersive experience with branching quests and extensive depth on CryEngine. Fable offers 1,000 handcrafted NPCs and some pretty deep interactions with its Reputation system (based on what we’ve seen thus far). Crimson Desert has already showcased that you can have a world much larger than Skyrim with a strong amount of reactive elements while delivering higher visual fidelity, better combat, and a wider variety of side activities. And lest we forget, that began development in 2018. Add another one to the list, to say nothing of the incredible turnaround of fixes, changes, improvements and new features in just three months. How long did it take for Starfield “Not 2.0” to happen again?
Of course, as always, Bethesda is going to do what it wants to do, which is fully reveal The Elder Scrolls 6 several months out from release. This would be fine if it followed the Fallout 4 or even the Fallout 76 marketing cycle. Instead, due to some half-baked plan to keep its fans from panicking, it’s created an unfathomable set of expectations on top of what’s already there. And while it could – and should – focus on the essence of The Elder Scrolls, and deliver an unforgettable experience – one that fans will play for over a decade, as Howard hopes – it can’t ignore them entirely.
Sure, it’ll still sell millions of copies, and notch up an impressive 20 million or so Game Pass players (not necessarily in that order). But maybe Bethesda needs to change things up, and let fans in on the ground floor sooner. If not for the sake of keeping them in the loop and restoring some goodwill, then to simply gauge feedback on whether it’s going in the right direction.
Or it could just subsist in this no-win situation and try, as always, to do better with Fallout 5 or whatever else is next. And thus, the cycle repeats.
Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.
