Todd Howard: Making Starfield was now or never, even if Elder Scrolls 6 had to wait

Elder Scrolls fans love to joke about the long gap between Skyrim and The Elder Scrolls 6, which is now 10 years and counting. Director Todd Howard is more aware of this gap than ever, but when it came to making Starfield and diving into a whole new world, it was more or less now or never.

In an extensive interview with IGN Unfiltered covering the 10th anniversary of Skyrim, Starfield, and The Elder Scrolls 6, Howard discussed the long list of projects that ended up delaying the project after the conclusion of Fallout 4 in 2015.

“Would you plan on having the kind of gap that we’re having between Skyrim and the follow-up? I can’t say it’s a good thing,” Howard says. “I wish I could wave a wand and the game we wanted to do? […] just come out? Absolutely.”

However, there were other projects that came first, including Fallout 76. What’s more, if Bethesda Game Studios ended up prioritizing The Elder Scrolls 6, it wasn’t clear if it would ever get another chance to do something really new.

“We felt like I was doing something like Starfield … we had wanted to do something else for a long time and play in a new universe, so if not now I’m going to go back in time, we started right after Fallout 4 so 2015, If not now, when? It seemed that if we didn’t do it then, the ‘when’ might be ‘never,’ Howard said.

Bethesda Game Studios ultimately decided to go ahead with Starfield, putting The Elder Scrolls 6 on the back burner. Both games were announced at E3 2018, but while Starfield is targeting a release late next year, The Elder Scrolls 6 remains in pre-production. Based on Bethesda’s usual development timeline, that could mean Elder Scrolls fans end up waiting another years before finally getting a chance to revisit Tamriel.

Elder Scrolls 6 is years away

Meanwhile, very little information has been revealed about Elder Scrolls 6, which Howard described as in the “design phase” in June. We know that both Elder Scrolls 6 and Starfield will be using a substantially updated version of the Creation Engine in what will be a “big leap” of Skyrim. Fans also suspect that it will be set in Hammerfell based on what appeared to be a subtle Easter egg buried in Starfield’s reveal trailer, along with other clues.

In describing what he would change about Skyrim, Howard hinted at the future direction of the series. “There are various parts of [Skyrim] where we don’t go deep enough, where it’s a veneer in terms of its interactivity. […] When we think about games and what we’d like to do in the future, that’s okay … whatever that system is … how deep can we do it? The other thing is how the AI ​​and the NPCs interact with you. That’s something that I think we still have a long way to go. “

Ultimately, the success of Elder Scrolls Online and the franchise’s overall health gave Bethesda the confidence to focus on Starfield, Howard said. “[E]Everything takes longer than we would like, but we want to make sure we get it right. Hopefully, Elder Scrolls 6, you don’t want to say that kind of wait is worth the wait, but it stands up to the series as it has been in a really big and shocking way when it debuts. “

Starfield will currently launch on Xbox Series X | S and PC on November 11, 2022, with Skyrim 10th Anniversary Edition later this week. You can hear the rest of our interview with Todd Howard on IGN Unfiltered, where he delves into Skyrim, Indiana Jones, Starfield, and more.

Kat Bailey is Senior News Editor at IGN