Still a long way off (Picture: Bethesda)
A reader is frustrated at the fact that there’s still no sign of a sequel to Skyrim and blames Bethesda’s Todd Howard for not delegating properly.
The idea of The Elder Scrolls 6 being released in 2028 has been floated around a few times before but this week it seemed to get official acknowledgement, via a new interview with Bethesda boss Todd Howard. He didn’t confirm it, but it certainly didn’t sound like the game would be out much before that and could even be later. So, assuming that is the date they’re aiming for it will, at that point, be 17 years since Skyrim.
I can’t think of any other ongoing franchise that has had that long a gap between sequels, especially when the other entries have been nothing like that, but even as an extreme example this, to me, shows how video game developers have to got to change the way they work.
If decent games are going to take a minimum of six years to make now, and you’re a company with more than one major franchise, you’re likely to go more than a decade between sequels. That might sound good in theory but that doesn’t mean extra time to experiment or make the game better than it would’ve been. Proportionally that’s still the same three years or so it took to make a AAA game a generation or so ago.
Games taking six years means they’re just as rushed as before, often more so. It’s just it takes that long to create graphics and other elements up to modern standards. It’s essentially lost time that is providing no benefit to the game itself.
There are a couple of obvious solutions, but I don’t know that any of them are going to be taken up. The first is to just make shorter games. Not only are smaller games like Spider-Man: Miles Morales a lot more cohesive and easy to enjoy but they’re much better at telling a story. But they’re just not a thing and the few examples that exist are basically just quirks that happen for specific reasons (Sony needed a new game for the PlayStation 5 launch, in that case).
Considering how bloated many games are nowadays shorter games would be a good idea for many reasons, but it seems almost pointless to even discuss it, as it’s clear publishers aren’t going to allow it.
The other option is getting someone else to make your games or to hire more people so you have multiple teams. This is where Bethesda get into so much trouble because they don’t do either. Despite being a big studio I don’t think they’ve ever worked on more than one major game at a time, and the release dates for Starfield, The Elder Scrolls 6, and Fallout 5 suggest they just do one and then move onto the other (in part because Todd Howard always seems to have to be the director).
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The one obvious exception is Fallout: New Vegas, which Obsidian made and Bethesda really seems to resent, because a lot of people say it’s better than their two games. Despite being a fan of theirs, Bethesda has always seemed full of themselves and here in particular it’s costing them. Why is there no New Vegas remake or sequel? That game is even older than Skyrim and yet we’ve had nothing.
If Fallout 5 is only going to be out after The Elder Scrolls 6 then it is potentially not going to be out until 2033, when Todd Howard will be 63. By that point will he have learned to delegate? Will he have gained a newfound love for shorter games? Will AAA video games require eight years to make, as a result of a new generation of hardware?
I think the answers to each of those questions are fairly easy to guess at, so I’m just hoping I don’t fall under a bus in the next five years or I’ll never get to play a sequel to Skyrim.
By reader Dalton
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A reader is frustrated at the fact that there’s still no sequel to Skyrim and blames Bethesda’s Todd Howard for not delegating properly.