Todd Howard Gives Unusual Advice to Players Who Are Waiting for News About The Elder Scrolls VI

Bethesda Game Studios announced The Elder Scrolls VI almost eight years ago—at E3 2018. We have seen an explosive teaser with some epic background music inherent to The Elder Scrolls franchise. However, it was the one and only reveal by the studio, and the game is still shrouded in mystery despite being announced almost 10 years ago.

We’ve heard plenty of rumors about The Elder Scrolls VI, though: about a possible release date in 2028-2029, possible hell development, possible setting, and more. But as long as Bethesda does not confirm any details, it’s still speculations and rumors. During the recent interview with IGN, Bethesda boss Todd Howard confessed he’s tired of the infinite number of questions about The Elder Scrolls VI and gave some awkward advice to players. He says, "Just pretend we didn't announce it. Doesn't exist. No one's heard a word." More highlights from the interview, where he also spoke about expectation moments and remembered previous announcements from Bethesda, you can check out below:

“I like to say, I always start with, when you go and press play, you're about to play a game. What do you already know? What's in your head? What's your excitement level? What's your expectations? And I back up from there. I prefer not to talk about stuff until then. I like to compress that moment where you hear about a game to when you can play it. Those would be on top of each other if I had my way every time. That isn't necessarily the best thing to do with every game. Sometimes you need to inform people and there's business considerations and et cetera, et cetera.

If you look back at this Fallout 76, Starfield, Elder Scrolls 6 announcement, that was really about informing our audience, because when you're going to do something new, everyone's going to ask, "What about Elder Scrolls 6? What about a single player game?" And we did it that way, but it's not my preference. And I will say, look, we struggle with the balance, because our fans want to know, they're amazing and saying like, "Well, what are you doing?"

And, well, we're working on a lot of stuff. I think if you look at the scale of our studio, we could have 10 times the amount of people to do all this. We're doing so much and it's just finding the right times to tell everybody about it. Look at Starfield today. I feel like the Starfield audience has been, "What about us?" And we had sort of balance with like, "Hey, the end of the Fall was for Fallout, the TV show," with everything we were doing. And we knew that we were just going to save the Starfield stuff to give its spotlight during this time. But yeah. It's a balance.”

In another interview, Howard also revealed how Bethesda Game Studio is trying to make their latest installments more innovative, based on experience from previous titles. In this way, he even called The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim a sequel to Fallout 3.

As for current plans of Bethesda Game Studios, recently Starfield was confirmed to release on PlayStation 5 next month, as well as the new DLC expansion Terra Almada and the biggest update so far, Free Lanes. The studio is also working on multiple Fallout titles, including the remastered versions of Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas, and Fallout 5 is said to be in the early stages of development as well.

The Elder Scrolls VI, in turn, doesn’t have a release date, and given the comments of Todd Howard that players should pretend the game is not announced, it looks like the game might be in an anxious situation.

Are you worried about the condition of The Elder Scrolls VI? When do you think the game could be released? Share your thoughts in the comments below!