High-ranking leads confirm that the Elder Scrolls 6 is now the prime focus of Bethesda Game Studios after its long silence of near two years on its development. The upcoming sequel currently seems to be “progressing really well” as reported by Howard (while speaking to Game Informer) , with most of the team having moved onto the project after some heavy lifting on Starfield. Howard, Browder, and Pagliarulo conferred in a series of interviews on the mounting angst within the fan base, making reference to the fourteen years between Skyrim and now, while justifying their studied approach to development.
The move in development resources means that several lengthy months of pre-production are now behind them, allowing for heavier iterations of the core systems. This very fact allows Howard to state that generally Skyrim, and every other game that follows it, was in some stage of preparatory development long before the Earth-space RPG was ever launched. But he says that faster would be nice, and everyone involved thinks so, but would just make the game less and less quality at their given date.
Angela Browder, the studio director, noted that this was a technological gap that the team was trying to bridge, adding that the sheer scale of the project would be beyond anything she could have imagined while working on Skyrim. Again, Emil Pagliarulo compared it to slow-cooking a meal, with the additional comment that the team does not feel the same pressure as the public to meet deadlines, asserting that players would prefer an experience that truly lives up to their expectations over a subpar title simply released to meet schedule.
Despite all these reassurances, Bethesda does not reveal any details about specific gameplay mechanics or even the game location. With the current strategy being cautious transparency- acknowledging the weight of expectation without tying themselves to a deadline- the comments must have sounded extremely satisfying and soothing to a community that has spent more than a decade revisiting Skyrim’s frozen tundras; while the “turkey is in the oven,” Bethesda adds that they will never serve it until it is cooked.
