While it is a well-known fact at this point that Bethesda decided to focus its efforts on Fallout 76 and Starfield after it was done with Fallout 4 rather than developing The Elder Scrolls 6, it looks like many at the studio thought they would start on the fantasy RPG immediately. In an interview with FRVR, The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim co-lead Kurt Kuhlmann spoke about this and, in the process, revealed more details about the development process behind Fallout 76.
“We all expected [The Elder Scrolls 6] to be directly after Fallout 4. Why wouldn’t it be? That’s what we did, and that was kind of the expectation. And then Fallout 76 came along.”
He went on to talk about how Fallout 76 was originally supposed to be a more focused project, with Bethesda Austin – formerly BattleCry Studios – working on it. It wasn’t meant to involve the entirety of Bethesda during development, with the rest of the team instead focusing on Starfield.
“It wasn’t originally supposed to involve our whole studio. But then, I mean, what we were supposed to be working on next—it wasn’t ever that we were about to suddenly work on TES 6, even though that’s what I think most people wanted… And then Todd [Howard] was like: ‘No, we’re doing Starfield. I got that approved. It’s going to be a new IP. It’s going to be this ambitious [game]. It’s going to be the greatest space RPG ever made.’”
This decision was seemingly a surprise to many. Howard describing it as his “dream game”, along with the company seeing quite a bit of success with Fallout 4, likely gave him more leeway to not immediately begin working on The Elder Scrolls 6. “Fallout 4 was a very successful game. And I think he had maybe the opportunity and the ability to go to the people running Zenimax and say, ‘I want to not do TES 6’. Which seems like a pretty hard sell, right? And it must have been.”
Kuhlmann spoke about how he didn’t really want to work on Starfield, and he “would’ve much rather been making The Elder Scrolls 6 instead of 76 and Starfield.” “And I think that would probably be true for the majority of the studio. That’s what most people wanted to do, you know? It wasn’t like Starfield was this big internal like, ‘hey, we all want to make this space game, Todd.’ It was very much, ‘guess what, team? We’re making this space game.’”
While the response to both of the games following Fallout 4 had been quite mixed at launch, Kuhlmann acknowledged that it was “very nice to have that, ‘okay, now for something completely different’, every few years and it was something you could look forward to.” He also noted that the existence of The Elder Scrolls Online may have played a role in quenching some fans’ thirst for a new entry in the franchise.
“There was another Scrolls project, and it was ongoing. It was creating new content constantly. And there are a lot of people—I know there are single-player people, I’m one of those people—but there are a lot of people for whom The Elder Scrolls is now ESO. That’s their experience with it, and that’s what they love, and that’s where they got their ESO, or their Elder Scrolls gaming experience.”
In the meantime, Bethesda is currently working on a number of projects across the Fallout franchise alongside its ongoing development of The Elder Scrolls 6.
