Skyrim lead designer says Todd Howard only revealed The Elder Scrolls 6 because the fans had 'pitchforks and torches' out
It's been five years since Todd Howard revealed the startling news that yes, Bethesda is going to make The Elder Scrolls 6, and it will be years yet before it actually arrives. It's a virtually unprecedented gap between a game's «announcement» (such as it was) and tangible evidence that something's being done to make it happen, and Howard himself said not too long ago that he regrets handling the reveal the way he did. The obvious question then is, why announce it at all? According to longtime Bethesda designer Bruce Nesmith, the fans basically bullied him into it.
«The company took years of hits for not talking about Elder Scrolls 6,» Nesmith said in a MinnMax interview. «I mean, years of hits. Because Todd's opinion—one which I share, by the way—is that the videogame industry has short memories. Those companies that start touting their games years ahead of time, actually, they screw themselves. The best time to start talking about it is six months before release.
»Only the fact that everybody was, you know, the pitchforks and torches were out, was what got Todd to say yes, we're going to do Elder Scrolls 6, I promise you, it's for real, it'll happen. But I'm betting you won't hear much in the way of details until a good six months before release."
That's exactly how Bethesda handled the release of Fallout 4 back in 2015: Bethesda officially announced the game in June 2015, and it launched in November of that same year. That brief window no doubt contributed to the expectation that when Elder Scrolls 6 was confirmed in 2018, it wouldn't be that far off—an expectation we now know was way off-base.
Nesmith left Bethesda in 2021 after a total of 20 years at the studio, during which time he earned credits on games including
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