It feels like we’ve heard a lot about Bethesda’s mysterious, upcoming RPG, The Elder Scrolls 6, lately. The publisher has been very tight-lipped about the game, which we first started hearing about in 2018, for the past eight years. We once got a title card, and that’s about it. It was only recently we started learning more litle nuggets of information about the game after Bethesda’s long silence on the project – whether it’s how an old designer thought it was going to be like The Empire Strikes Back, or how Bethesda boss man Todd Howard wishes development “went a little faster”, we’ve heard more in the past few months than the past few years combined.
Not wanting to disappoint us with this relatively break-neck dripfeed of information, Bethesda director Todd Howard has given a surprisingly candid interview with KindaFunny. The veteran Bethesda creative gives us a few interesting tidbits, noting that he wishes the team didn’t reveal the game so early – not for the first time – and that after a meandering “creative detour” in the form of Fallout 76 and Starfield, the team is looking back to its classic formula for The Elder Scrolls 6.
“We do have a certain style that we like and that our fans like that we want to get better and better at,” Howard said in the interview. “I think in some ways Fallout 76 and Starfield are a little bit of a creative detour from that classic Elder Scrolls, Fallout, a Skyrim or a Fallout 3 or a Fallout 4, Oblivion, where you’re exploring a world in a certain way. And as we come back to Elder Scrolls 6 that we’re doing now, we’re coming back to that classic style that we’ve missed, that we know really really well.”
If you were dubious about the capabilities of the engine that powered Starfield living up to current-gen expectations, fret not: Howard also noted that Bethesda has been deep in research and development over the past few years, and the resulting Creation Engine 3 is a marked step up from the Creation Engine 2 that powered 2023’s divisive space-faring RPG. The Creation Engine 3 will be the bast for “Elder Scrolls 6 and beyond.” (Let’s all agree nobody’s to say “Fallout 5” yet.)
Finally, if you need a bit of confidence in the team working on The Elder SCrolls 6, Howard teases “the majority of people who made Skyrim are still here,” alongside a wave of new talent in the studio, too. The game is still a long way off, though, so don’t get too excited about that just yet. Even if some fans think we’re going to get some sort of teaser sooner, rather than later.