Bethesda director Todd Howard is tired of being asked about The Elder Scrolls 6, and would rather we all pretend he just didn’t announce it at all.
That comes from an interview we conducted with him which was not about The Elder Scrolls 6, but about Starfield, at a preview event for the upcoming major Starfield update, which you can read all about here. While we were chatting about Starfield, Howard happened to mention feeling uncertain about how early to announce updates, and the effort it takes to make sure the community knows the team is working on something without making them wait for something forever.
Which, you know, brings to mind another game with this exact problem. The Elder Scrolls 6. So, we mentioned it.
“Just pretend we didn’t announce it,” Howard replied. “Doesn’t exist. No one’s heard a word.”
Okay, sure. But what’s his philosophy around this generally? Is he more conscious about what he shares and when?
Yes, of course, he says. Here’s the rest of Howard’s lengthy response, in full:
I like to say, I always start with, when you go and press play, you’re about to play a game. What do you already know? What’s in your head? What’s your excitement level? What’s your expectations? And I back up from there. I prefer not to talk about stuff until then. I like to compress that moment where you hear about a game to when you can play it. Those would be on top of each other if I had my way every time. That isn’t necessarily the best thing to do with every game. Sometimes you need to inform people and there’s business considerations and et cetera, et cetera.
If you look back at this Fallout 76, Starfield, Elder Scrolls 6 announcement, that was really about informing our audience, because when you’re going to do something new, everyone’s going to ask, “What about Elder Scrolls 6? What about a single player game?” And we did it that way, but it’s not my preference. And I will say, look, we struggle with the balance, because our fans want to know, they’re amazing and saying like, “Well, what are you doing?”
And, well, we’re working on a lot of stuff. I think if you look at the scale of our studio, we could have 10 times the amount of people to do all this. We’re doing so much and it’s just finding the right times to tell everybody about it. Look at Starfield today. I feel like the Starfield audience has been, “What about us?” And we had sort of balance with like, “Hey, the end of the Fall was for Fallout, the TV show,” with everything we were doing. And we knew that we were just going to save the Starfield stuff to give its spotlight during this time. But yeah. It’s a balance.
Okay, I’m happy for the Starfield folks, truly, and I’m sorry Howard has to keep hearing about this, but The Elder Scrolls fans are starved for new stuff. The Elder Scrolls 6 was announced almost eight years ago, making it longer between the announcement and now than it was between The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and the announcement of The Elder Scrolls 6.
Howard is constantly batting away questions about what’s going on with that game, both warning fans last year that it’s “still a long way off” and confirming it’s “playable” just this past February and that most of the studio was working on it. If Howard has his way, we probably won’t know The Elder Scroll 6’s release date until the day it launches. We’ll have to content ourselves with TES Online and the Oblivion remaster for a long while yet, it seems.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
