Todd Howard has provided a small but interesting update about the upcoming The Elder Scrolls 6, which fans have been awaiting for a long time.
During the latest episode of the Kinda Funny Gamescast, Howard mentioned that Bethesda has a style in its previous games, where you explore the world in a certain way, and which the studio wants to get better and better at. Yet, he admitted that Fallout 76 and Starfield were “a little bit of a creative detour” from that classic style one can find in Skyrim, Oblivion, Fallout 3, or Fallout 4.
That being said, he mentioned that Bethesda is coming back to that classic style with The Elder Scrolls 6, which they themselves missed.
They have spent several years upgrading Creation Engine 2, which powered Starfield, into Creative Engine 4 for ES6 and beyond. They’re really happy with the new rendering systems, world systems, loading, how things are brought into the world, how the details close to the cameras are rendered, but Howard believes there’s still a lot of innovation to be done in the style of game Bethesda is known for, and fans expect, so that “when you step into a world, you really feel like you’re experiencing it for the first time.” As such, the studio is happy with where ES6 is headed right now.
Howard added that “it’s going to be a while yet,” but the game is playable, and a big milestone internally is about to be passed. The majority of the studio is currently working on it alongside some of Bethesda’s partners.
He also mentioned that the majority of the folks who made The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim are still working at Bethesda, and the studio is in an “amazing place” where they have people who have been working there for decades, combined with a lot of new talent.
It’s worth mentioning that when a developer mentions that a game is “playable,” that doesn’t mean in any way that it’s close to release.
The Elder Scrolls 6 has been announced all the way back at E3 2018, and we don’t know when it’ll release. While it appears that things are going well behind the scenes, we’ll have to wait and see.
