With the success of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, it should come in as no surprise that a new installment in the series of games is in the works. However, news on the next high-fantasy medieval title, The Elder Scrolls VI, won’t surface anytime soon as per Pete Hines — Bethesda’s SVP of global marketing and communications.
For those of you who are out of the loop or curious about The Elder Scrolls VI should know that Starfield comes first. This means we’ll hear about Starfield’s promotional material and public release sometime in the future.
After Starfield, Bethesda Softworks and Bethesda Game Studios will shift all attention/work over to The Elder Scrolls VI. In other words, we won’t be hearing any official news from Bethesda regarding the next Elder Scrolls game since we are many years out.
The above information comes from a tweet that Hines sent out as a response to a curious fan:
It’s after Starfield, which you pretty much know nothing about. So if you’re coming at me for details now and not years from now, I’m failing to properly manage your expectations.
— Pete Hines (@DCDeacon) May 10, 2020
Although Hines is known to release untrustworthy information, it seems as if this time he is telling a consistent story in regards to The Elder Scrolls VI. The reason behind this sentiment is that back on September 8th, 2018, Hines had this to say about Starfield and the next Elder Scrolls game during an interview via yahoo.com:
“[…] Number one we were honestly a little tired of being asked about Elder Scrolls VI. And the Starfield trademark filing and dancing around those things. Elder Scrolls VI we didn’t really dance around, we said ‘yes we’re going to do it but there are two games to come first’. But that didn’t really catch on and we still had people asking when are you going to do it. And part of it was because Fallout 76 was a departure for them and saying ‘look, we want to try something very different than what we’ve done before’.
We want to make it very clear to folks that this isn’t what all Bethesda Game Studios look like now. The next game we are making is Starfield. It is a new IP, it’s a single-player role playing game that folks understand. And then we’re going to make Elder Scrolls VI.
They understand the context that this is something different but we want to try it. You guys are constantly asking us about multiplayer and playing with other folks, so we want to try that. But then we are going to go back to something you know us better for and we’ll get around to The Elder Scrolls VI. It just helps paint a better picture and a road-map for what’s next and what that’s going to look like. Even if that doesn’t come with a date of when that game is going to come out or when we’ll show it to you.”
In other words, the announcements of the two next-gen games paved a road-map as to what Bethesda Game Studios will bring fans moving forward. Additionally, this means that fans out of the loop now know that Starfield will come first, followed by The Elder Scrolls VI.
In the meantime, Bethesda will not hold a physical or digital event to showcase its games and upcoming work. This means news on Starfield might pop up anytime this year or next year.