Skyrim co-lead says Bethesda expected to make Elder Scrolls 6 much sooner

Former Bethesda developer and Skyrim co-lead Kurt Kuhlmann has said most developers at Bethesda expected The Elder Scrolls 6 to follow Fallout 4, only for Fallout 76 and Starfield to change those plans.

The Elder Scrolls 6 was officially announced in 2018, but eight years later, Bethesda has shared very little about its long-awaited Skyrim successor. According to Kuhlmann, however, developers originally expected to return to the series much sooner.

Speaking to FRVR, the former Elder Scrolls loremaster and Skyrim co-lead explained that the assumption within Bethesda Game Studios was that TES6 would be its next major RPG after Fallout 4 launched in 2015.

“We all expected it to be directly after Fallout 4,” Kuhlmann said. “Why wouldn’t it be? That’s what we did, and that was kind of the expectation. And then Fallout 76 came along.”

Bethesda

Kuhlmann said many at Bethesda expected to move on to Elder Scrolls 6 sooner than the studio did.

Kuhlmann explained that Fallout 76 was not originally supposed to involve the entire Bethesda Game Studios team. The multiplayer spin-off was initially being handled by BattleCry Studios, since renamed Bethesda Game Studios Austin, but eventually pulled developers from the main studio onto the project.

Even then, however, the plan wasn’t to immediately move onto The Elder Scrolls 6.

“It wasn’t originally supposed to involve our whole studio,” Kuhlmann said. “But then, I mean, what we were supposed to be working on next, it wasn’t ever that we were about to suddenly work on TES 6, even though that’s what I think most people wanted.”

Instead, Todd Howard had secured approval for Bethesda’s first new IP in decades, Starfield.

“And then Todd was like: ‘No, we’re doing Starfield. I got that approved. It’s going to be a new IP. It’s going to be this ambitious [game]. It’s going to be the greatest space RPG ever made.’”

When asked whether he would have preferred to make The Elder Scrolls 6 instead of Starfield, Kuhlmann said he would have, adding that he believed the “majority of the studio” likely felt the same way.

Bethesda ultimately released Fallout 76 in 2018 and Starfield in 2023, while The Elder Scrolls 6 remains in development. Last month, Xbox boss Asha Sharma offered a cryptic response to whether the sequel would be a console exclusive.