Bethesda Gives Us An Update On The Elder Scrolls VI Development

During our in-depth conversations with key people at Bethesda for our big Fallout retrospective in the latest issue of Game Informer, we also touched on how development on The Elder Scrolls VI is progressing. The game was first announced in 2018 but hasn’t received any meaningful updates since then. They were all understandably guarded, but here’s what they had to say.

Angela Browder
Studio Director

“It’s wonderful to be back in this Elder Scrolls universe. As the internet likes to tell us, it’s been a while. And the industry and the hardware and all of this have made such huge leaps and bounds since the last time we made one of these, like, I’m actively excited about what’s in front of us, because the opportunities, the hardware, the rendering, all of this stuff has just… the possibilities are crazy! I will be honest, for me, sometimes I see things that are happening, and I go, ‘Angela from Skyrim days could never have envisioned seeing this like this now,’ and that is a cool thing to be a part of. And it’s a thing that I hope that when the day comes that our fans play it, that they – especially those of them who’ve been lifers with our brands – can really see how far it’s all come. You can see that right now: You load up the original Oblivion, and you load up the remaster of Oblivion, and you can see how far it’s all come. So, to me, The Elder Scrolls VI is this endless set of possibilities that is really, really exciting as a developer, but really, really exciting as someone who really likes to think about how far everything has come in our industry. It’s gonna be dope. It’s dope! [laughs]”

Todd Howard
Director and Executive Producer

“It’s progressing really well. The majority of the studio’s on VI, but I’ll say this: We always overlap. So, we’re very used to overlapping development. And we have long pre-productions on things so that we feel good about them. And it’s a process. We all wish it went a little bit faster – or a lot faster – but it’s a process that we want to get right.”

Emil Pagliarulo
Studio Design Director

“I can say that it’s going! It’s funny, because the time pressure that players put on us, we don’t put on ourselves. And I know that can be frustrating for players who are dying to play a game. Games take a long time, and games get pushed all the time; GTA just got pushed again, which was the smartest thing they could do, because a game the size of these games, they take not just a long time to make, but a long time to spit and polish and iron out the bugs. And so, what do fans really want? Do they want a game that comes out before it should and doesn’t meet their expectations? Or do they want the turkey that is in the oven for long enough to be delicious when it finally comes out of the oven, you know? That’s what I think people are going to want. So, we’re going to take our time and as long as it needs to be to be great.”