We’re honestly all going to be skeletons by the time Elder Scrolls 6 comes out. During the heated Microsoft vs. FTC battle, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer revealed that The Elder Scrolls 6 was AT LEAST another 5 years away from release and wasn’t guaranteed to be ready for new Xbox console generation.
I can’t believe it’s actually going to be 20 years between Skyrim and The Elder Scrolls 6.
It was revealed during the Microsoft vs. FTC hearing over Microsoft’s $70B acquisition of Activision Blizzard that The Elder Scrolls 6, a game that has casually been in development since 2011, is still another 5 years away from release and it’s too early to tell if it will be out by the time the new Xbox console generation releases in 2028. So, in other words, we’re all probably going to be dead and rotting in the ground by the time this game rolls around.
I can’t believe it’s going to be close to twenty years between the release of Skyrim and the release of The Elder Scrolls 6. TWENTY YEARS!
Yes, Bethesda are an extremely busy company and have made games like Fallout 4, Starfield, Fallout 76, and have published dozens of other games from developers under their “influence” in the mean time, yet it’s insane how the company’s most successful franchise is going to have a near-20-year wait time between entries.
As the 7th highest-selling game of all-time with over 60M copies sold, The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim has had such a massive impact on the gaming world and the RPG/open-world/ARPG genre as a whole.
Whether its gameplay, story techniques, worldbuilding ideas, lore ideas, graphical advancements, game engine inspiration, or just the beloved memes, Skyrim will forever have a significant place in both the gaming genre and pop culture in the 2010’s and 2020’s due to how many people have played and loved it.
There’s a reason it is the most famous game Bethesda Game Studios has ever made, sold over 60M copies worldwide, has hundreds of thousands of community mods created for it, won the 2011 Game of the Year, and has stayed relevant in the gaming genre for the last 12 years (and will do so until The Elder Scrolls 6 comes out).
Yet, Bethesda have seemingly abandoned the development for its successor.
(Bethesda Softworks/Microsoft-The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim-Official Trailer)
Okay, saying Bethesda “abandoned” ES6 is a bit much given the facts I’ve stated above, but no one can deny that any other game developer or publisher in the world would not have waited 12+ years and counting to release the sequel to the 7th highest selling game of all time.
If Skyrim was made by EA, Ubisoft, or Activision, we would have seen 6-10 Elder Scrolls sequel already with another 6-10 planned out for the 2020’s and 2030’s decades. Obviously, these games wouldn’t have been anywhere close to as good as Skyrim was, but these massive publishers would have done everything in their power to milk The Elder Scrolls franchise until they bled the ES utter dry.
And that’s why I’m super happy and grateful that its Bethesda, and not these three companies I’ve named, who created The Elder Scrolls and have taken their time in developing the game.
Obviously, I believe that Bethesda really should have just made The Elder Scrolls 6 into a game with the scope and ambition akin to Starfield than some uber creative, overly ambitious, and near impossible to design game that takes 20 years to assemble, but that’s just me.
Once again, I personally would have preferred The Elder Scrolls 7 to have these 20+years-needed-to-make graphics, game mechanics, character models, stories, game engines, combat systems, etc. as that would have made the wait time between Skyrim and ES6 far more manageable.
At the end of the day, I very much appreciate Bethesda for taking the time to make The Elder Scrolls 6 as rewarding as humanly possible, but I fear they’re falling into the old adage of “letting perfections being the enemy of good”. Or, in this case, “great”.
Images Source: Featured Image: (Bethesda Softworks/Microsoft) (The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – Official Trailer – YouTube)
In Text Image 1: (Bethesda Softworks/Microsoft) (The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – Official Trailer – YouTube)
