Hardly any game since the first Doom has been ported as often and over such a long period of time as The Elder Scrolls V. But a sequel is still a long way off: although Bethesda has been around since 2016 at least is working on The Elder Scolls VI and already showed a teaser video in 2018, patience is required.
Todd Howard, the game director at Bethesda Studios, told the Telegraph that the project was still in some sort of design phase. Mechanics, concepts, locations and many other things are evaluated before the first prototypes are created. The development team is currently checking whether the technical basis already meets the requirements. This will be the Creation Engine 2, which is also used in the sci-fi role-playing game Starfield. The engine still needs some “extensions”.
This is hardly a surprise: Bethesda has described Starfield as a “Han Solo simulator” or “Skyrim in space”. Starfield is currently the project that will slow down the next Elder Scrolls. Because the work should only begin in full when the sci-fi project has been completed. This will be the case on November 11, 2022, provided that Bethesda can meet the announced date. Thanks to the identical technical basis, work on Starfield also benefits The Elder Scrolls VI. The engine was “built in a way for both [games],” Howard said. In this area the work would overlap, “everyone works on everything”.
Wait, wait, wait
A Skyrim sequel is therefore not to be expected in the coming years. If all the cornerstones of the game are not even determined, major projects are still several years away from completion, especially since Bethesda has announced its plan to keep the game alive for years. A publication close to Starfield also makes less and less sense, the more similar both games are in the basic concept. The completion of Elder Scrolls 6 is therefore not expected until the middle of the decade at the earliest.