Todd Howard: Think of The Elder Scrolls VI as Still in the Design Phase - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 03 September 2021 / 2,436 Views
Todd Howard in an interview with The Telegraph discussed Creation Engine 2 and the highly anticipated sequel to Skyrim, The Elder Scrolls VI.
"The [new Starfield] technology, Creation Engine 2, is sort of built for both [Starfield and The Elder Scrolls VI]," said Howard. "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 VI 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 VI will have some additions on to Creation Engine 2 that that game is going to require."
Bethesda earlier this month announced Starfield will be an Xbox console exclusive and launch on November 11, 2022 for the Xbox Series X|S and PC.
The developer's senior lighting artist Keith Beltramini revealed the teaser trailer for Starfield was in-game and did not use any cinematic tools.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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Skyrim ported to Samsung smart fridges first, am I right?
It's not even in active development yet? At this rate the game won't be out until the end of this gen.
I wasn't expecting a large team to be working on ESVI yet by any means, but what the HELL has the team that has been working on it for the past 3 years been doing?!? I figured at the very least, pre-production would be completed after 3 years.
Star Field
That's what the main team has been working on for sure, but I'm talking about the small team that gets the groundwork done before going into full production once Starfield is released. Dev studios always have multiple teams working on different projects. It for sure isn't a large team yet, but a small team would have been working on ESVI this whole time since the games announcement.
Star Field is still more than a year off from releasing. They probably have all hands on deck to finish it first.
Oblivion released 2006, Skyrim 2011, and ESVI in... 2025 or later??? It seems Fallout and Starfield took all resources...
They really did, plus they were working on an entirely new version of their game engine. Ashley Cheng said it's a breath of fresh air to be working on something brand new and not working on Fallout for the foreseeable future lol. So, although we definitely won't be getting ESVI for quite a while, I think it'll help the game in the long run.
What about Elder Scrolls Online?
That's developed by Zenimax Online Studios, not BGS.
When this game does release it will be huge, exclusive or not!
November 2025 it seems lol. Does that mean we won't see a fallout 5 this gen?
Probably... fallout will return next gen.
Imagine if Microsoft has BGS team up with Obsidian and inXile to collaborate on Fallout 5 ;)
If Microsoft don't plan on making fallout5 multiplat, I can't see the chances of it releasing this gen. After starfield and elder scrolls, and a loss of 70 to 100 million ps5 userbase, the forecasts and profits off sales would be down dramatically. I don't know if they will invest more money for the sake of pleasing xbox users.
They won't be missing the PS userbase at that point, or even by the end of next year. Fallout was a PC exclusive for the first 2 games. That's the point of exclusives though, it brings players into your ecosystem and that's what Xbox system is now, an ecosystem, not just a console. I have several friends of mine that still play on their PS4 and one of them has a PS5, but they're all streaming Game Pass to their Mac's and iPhones right now lol. The PC userbase is massive too and Xbox is going after them aggressively by putting their games on Steam as well as integrating Game Pass on PC, and now they're strengthening their streaming services to get billions of mobile users. Not to mention they're working with TV manufacturers to have the Xbox app integrated into Smart TV's.
I primarily game on PC, and the Xbox app that's integrated into Windows is nearly identical to the experience on the actual console. Xbox really couldn't care less about the PS user base or even the Nintendo user base going forward. If anything, numbers skyrocket even higher when/if Fallout 5 is announced because the Xbox ecosystem is the only place to play it, and Xbox knows PS5 users won't mind getting a Game Pass subscription to play Fallout 5 on their TV, PC, Smartphone, or streaming stick at that point.
Could Xbox make Fallout 5 multiplat? Totally! It’s completely up to Xbox, but they don’t need it to be.
So instead of making the next game they've been making a new engine. So next Elder Scrolls will launch toward the end of the current console's lifecycle lol.
So this is still like 5years away? sigh
ES6 is so far away...
And fallout 5?
AndvI thought Starfield was vaporware...
Imagine all the funny bugs we're going to get this time.
So a 2022 release. Not like Bethesda ever releases finished games anyway. Always broken unfinished messes.
The last game came out 10 years ago...and this is the company worth 7.8 billion dollars?
That sounds about right. 2026 at the latest. If they've been working on ESVI for 3 years now since the announcement trailer, pre-production SHOULD be done by Starfield's launch, which it should've been done by now, and they can then go into full production with all the groundwork already completed.
The only thing that I could see causing a push into an even later release date, is how much DLC they want to make for Starfield.
Nice write up, But Elsweyr Also has deserts With big canyons, and on that video/picture you refer too they show a desert canyon.
Is there a book I can read that gets me up to date ?
You need to remember that tod howard Is still in change, and lost his ways a bit, and gave us fallout 76, which they are still supporting. And then you got the new engine. I wouldn't be surprised if they split the team up to work on fallout 5.
Many forget that Fallout 76 was not made by Howard or the main team in Maryland. It was developed by their B team in Austin, who was also responsible for the engine changes needed to support a multiplayer game. Zenimax Online and id Software assisted as well. Howard being the head of the studio of course had to plaster his face on the game for sales, and man did he regret that lol. The Austin team is still the one who supports 76 to this day and will continue to support it.
That’s why in interviews whenever Howard talks about development of Starfield, he brings up that it started when the last Fallout 4 DLC released, completely skipping 76 because he had no actual involvement in development for that game.
So i'm assuming the team working on starfield is the one that will commence on elder scrolls, or has he stated that they got 2 seperate teams ?
It will be the same team for both games with Howard directing both. So, if Starfield ends up sucking, we'll know exactly who to blame!
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