While there have been plenty of reports and rumors about upcoming Bethesda games like The Elder Scrolls 6 and Fallout 5, it looks like the company is more intent on working on these projects in-house. In a recent episode of his podcast, renowned games journalist and Giant Bomb founder Jeff Gerstmann has noted that the company is more likely to hire more employees and grow its teams to work on these projects rather than hiring external studios to work on them.
Discussing the idea of Bethesda’s major IPs like Fallout and The Elder Scrolls being handed over to other studios under the Xbox Game Studios umbrella, Gerstmann noted his belief that the company, along with veteran director Todd Howard, have a “pretty firm grasp” on the future of these franchises.
“I think Todd Howard and the team probably have a pretty firm grasp of what they want to do with those specific franchises, and instead of assigning that stuff to another team, it would be more likely for them to staff up at Bethesda Game Studios to make sure that they have what they need to get those games done,” he said, before mentioning that another Microsoft-owned studio was working on something in the Fallout universe that ultimately got cancelled. While he acknowledges that remakes or remasters might get handed off to other studios, Bethesda will likely stick to making new mainline entries by itself.
“There was a Fallout thing in development at another Microsoft-owned studio that I think is no longer going to see the light of day,” he said. “But yeah, they will probably not do the remakes. I think those have been outsourced to others, like the Fallout 3 thing, which I think has been outsourced to an external studio. But, you know, new games will probably come from that brain trust, and I think that they probably will continue to have a pretty firm grasp on that.”
We’ve seen Bethesda working with other companies in the past when it came to making The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered, which was handled by Virtuos. Similarly, the company has also worked with external partners on some of the ports and re-releases of its games. For example, Iron Galaxy Studios is known for its work in bringing over Fallout 4 and The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim to VR.
As for what the company is working on right now, The Elder Scrolls 6 is noted as being developed using a new version of the Creation Engine. Howard had spoken about this just last month, noting that the team has been quite happy with how development has been progressing.
“We have a style of game we really, really like, that people expect from us, and there is a lot of innovation to be done there still, so when you step into a world, you feel like you are experiencing it for the first time. We’re happy with where [Elder Scrolls 6] is headed right now,” he said.
He has also noted that there are “multiple” Fallout projects in the works.
