In a recent interview, Director Todd Howard shared some details about their decision to make Starfield instead of going for other projects.
Media outlet IGN interviewed Howard to cover Skyrim’s 10th anniversary and the topic of Starfield and The Elder Scrolls 6 came up. He revealed that after the completion of Fallout 4 in 2015, there were a lot of projects that got pushed back. He kind of joked about how they wished there was a magic wand where they could just wave and the game they wanted to make would be launched right away.
There were projects that needed to be prioritized and that included Fallout 76. He also revealed that if they started with The Elder Scroll 6 in development, the team might not get another chance to make something new.
Howard said that Bethesda wanted to make something new like Starfield and this has been a long time coming. “If not now, when?” he said. “It felt like, if we didn’t do it then, the ‘when’ could be ‘never.’”
The team ultimately decided to focus on Starfield and that led to The Elder Scrolls 6 on the backlog. Both were announced at E3 2018, but Starfield is planned for late 2022 while The Elder Scrolls 6 launch window is still unknown and probably will be on the shelf for a long time.
Starfield launches on November 11, 2022 for Xbox Series X/S, and PC.