Bethesda just announced it plans to bring Starfield to PlayStation 5 on April 7, along with a bunch of new content and improvements to its spacefaring RPG. In a wide-ranging interview with IGN, studio head and creative director Todd Howard also spilled a few precious drops of Elder Scrolls tea. Naturally, he didn’t share much about the hotly anticipated game’s story or setting, but he did share a bit of new information about the studio’s progress on The Elder Scrolls 6, and shared some insights about how core RPG systems should work.
It’s no secret that AAA games like Starfield and The Elder Scrolls 6 spend many years in development. According to Howard, Bethesda Game Studios projects begin with a smaller “pre-production” staff for two to three years “to make sure we know what we’re doing.” Once the overall direction is in place, the team expands to execute on that vision. “We’re at that point with The Elder Scrolls 6 where the bulk of the studio is on it, a lot of our partners are on it, and we know, ‘Hey, this is what we’re doing.’ So that’s a good place to get to,” Howard told IGN.
Though it will continue to work on live-service titles like Fallout 76 and Elder Scrolls Online, as well as future content for Starfield, it appears that the next installment of the Elder Scrolls series is what most of Bethesda’s staff is working on at the moment. This doesn’t give us any clue about a potential release date, but it also suggests that The Elder Scrolls 6 actually exists in playable form, beyond just the title card Bethesda shared all the way back in 2018.
