author: Michael Kulakowski
The Elder Scrolls 6 Still in Design Phase; Starfield Has Priority
Todd Howard, the director of Bethesda Game Studios' key brands, gave an interview on the status of The Elder Scrolls 6 and the team's other upcoming games, including the highly anticipated Starfield.
Journalists from British newspaper The Telegraph had the opportunity to ask a few key questions to Todd Howard, director of Bethesda's biggest IPs, who has been the public face of the team for years. Fans of the company's works will certainly be most interested in news about The Elder Scrolls 6. Howard was quite frank here and stated that the game is still in the design phase. Its premature announcement in 2018 was mainly intended to reassure consumers who feared the developer would move away from classic single-player story titles after Fallout 76.
The long development process is largely due to the fact that the studio is preparing a new technology - Creation Engine 2, which is being developed simultaneously for Starfield and TES 6. Its capabilities are still being expanded so as to meet the requirements of both titles. Let's add that the launch of Starfield will not take place until November 2022.
“The technology, Creation Engine 2, is sort of built for both [games - TES6 and Stafield - ed. note] It’s like a new tech base. The vast majority of our development work is on Starfield right now but everybody works on everything so the projects kind of intertwine.
It’s good to think of The Elder Scrolls 6 as still being in a design [phase]… but we’re checking the tech: ‘Is this going to handle the things we want to do in that game?’ Every game will have some new suites of technology so Elder Scrolls 6 will have some additions on to Creation Engine 2 that that game is going to require.”
It has become clear that Bethesda's main priority at the moment is to complete Starfield and polish Creation Engine 2, which will be the foundation for the developer's future productions. This means The Elder Scrolls 6is still a few years away.
Howard also mentioned a bit about the next project, whose release is currently very distant. It is, of course, the Indiana Jones game, announced at the beginning of this year. The developer said that he is a big fan of the brand and has repeatedly tried to interest Lucasfilm in the possibility of creating a new game set in this universe. He first made such a proposal back in 2009. The director emphasized that Machine Games, the studio responsible for the success of the new Wolfenstein, is the ideal developer to bring the adventures of the most famous archaeologist to PC and consoles.
