Bethesda capped their entertaining and surprising E3 2018 showcase by giving fans what they’ve been begging for for years. The Elder Scrolls VI is coming, and we all got to see it. Well, we got to see a tiny, minuscule sliver of the game, with a trailer that clocked in at just over 35 seconds. No real gameplay was shown, just a landscape, which many are already speculating about. One other key piece of info was missing as well, when is The Elder Scrolls VI coming out?
Yes, while Bethesda has a track record of announcing games when they are close to completion, such as Fallout 4 and Fallout 76, The Elder Scrolls VI is likely nowhere close to being finished. Based on some other information given by Todd Howard, we can still speculate though, and it points to a long wait for Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim fans.
According to Todd Howard, the next big single payer adventure out of Bethesda Game Studios is the just announced Starfield. This game also had just a small teaser of a trailer with no release date. According to Howard, it is the team’s “next generation” title. Now, depending on who you ask, there will either never be a “next generation” of consoles, or they’re a couple of years away. Either way, what Howard was saying was that the game would be a big jump in terms of gameplay, graphics, and all those other things that make a game work.
So, if Starfield is Bethesda Game Studios’ first big “next generation” game, then it seems like The Elder Scrolls VI is the second. This means we shouldn’t expect TES VI to arrive anytime before Starfield’s release, which is still an open question. Most likely, Starfield will be the big game at Bethesda’s E3 2019 Showcase, with a release date either later that year or some time in 2020. This would put The Elder Scrolls VI releasing no earlier than 2020. It could hit later in the year, or it could be pushed toward 2021, or even 2022 if Bethesda has been putting most of its time into Starfield.
Either way, there’s a long wait for The Elder Scrolls fans. Right now my money is on TES VI hitting a release date of 2021, but if the stars align it could be a bit sooner. Right now we all just have to remember that the wait will likely be worth it, if the team can deliver on the promise of a true “next generation” Elder Scrolls game.
