They may have access to Microsoft’s resources, but don’t expect Bethesda Game Studios to be rushing out sequels to its biggest franchises anytime soon.
Todd Howard, game director of the highly anticipated sci-fi RPG title “Starfield,” has spoken with IGN this week and revealed that new entries in the “Elder Scrolls” and “Fallout” franchises are on their way but both titles are years off.
Offering an update on the studio’s plans once “Starfield” releases next year and is presumably done with post-release updates and DLC:
“Yes, Elder Scrolls 6 is in pre-production and, you know, we’re going to be doing Fallout 5 after that, so our slate’s pretty full going forward for a while. We have some other projects that we look at from time to time as well.”
Work on “Starfield” began in late 2015, right after they wrapped “Fallout 4”. Both “Starfield” and the “Skyrim” follow-up were announced at E3 2018, but the developer pushed “Elder Scrolls VI” to the backburner because they wanted to put their focus on “Starfield” and getting it out first.
As “Elder Scrolls VI” still remains in the pre-production stages and going by Bethesda’s usual timelines, it would suggest that title isn’t coming until at least a few years after the release of “Starfield” in 2023.
“Fallout 5,” which only exists as a “one-pager” of “what we want to do” says Howard, would then come several years after that.
Right now it’s not clear if either in-development title will make the current generation of hardware as, going by past release patterns, PlayStation and Xbox will potentially drop the next generation of consoles in 2027.
Part of the reason they will take so long is the company isn’t going to outsource or rush anything, they’re hand-crafted games that need the proper time and attention:
They do take a while, I wish they came out faster, I really do, we’re trying as hard as we can, but we want them to be as best as they can be for everybody.”
Talking about “Starfield,” he revealed that the spacefaring adventure’s main story campaign might take players 30-40 hours to complete and is their biggest game to date by about 20% in terms of scale.
He confirmed the title will not have the “No Man’s Sky” ability to fly ships directly from space onto a planet without any loads. They tested the ability but it ended up on the cutting room floor as it was deemed “not that important to the player” according to Howard who added: “we decided early in the project that the on-surface is one reality, and then when you’re in space, it’s another reality.”
There are four major cities across the game’s 1,000 planets that players will explore throughout the story, the biggest being New Atlantis which is Bethesda’s largest city to date. Players can also bypass the procedurally generated spaceflights and get straight to the action.
“Starfield” will arrive for Xbox consoles and PC in the first half of 2023.
