Bethesda’s E3 press conference included a bevy of announcements which included ones for The Elder Scrolls 6 and Starfield, two games that the company has since said would not be releasing anytime soon. But Bethesda Executive Producer Todd Howard has now shed some light to the company’s decision to announce both games so far from release.
Speaking to Eurogamer at Gamelab in Spain, Todd Howard said that the decision to announce The Elder Scrolls 6 and Starfield early became a debate at the company that led to the conclusion that they felt the need to reveal both games at this year’s E3 because of the other titles they were showing off, namely Fallout 76 and The Elder Scrolls: Blades.
Todd Howard told Eurogamer, “There were two things in our heads about that. One, we’re going to E3 and showing a new Fallout game [Fallout 76] which is very different than we usually do, and then we’re going to show you an Elder Scrolls game [Blades – the mobile game] that is very different than we would usually do, and if we leave it just at that, our fans are like, ‘… – Are you still going to do the things I love?’”
According to Howard, the studio decided that it would be better to just announce that they were making The Elder Scrolls 6 and Starfield rather than face the disappointment and inevitable questions from fans asking about the two titles. He said, “It’s better to say we’re making it. It makes life a little bit easier for us.”
Howard isn’t oblivious to the repercussions of announcing the games too early though, which he says could include fans being distracted away from what they’re currently releasing, such as Fallout 76 and The Elder Scrolls: Blades, or building hype for the titles too early and end up not being able to answer questions about them for quite awhile. He said, “There’ll certainly be some new negatives we didn’t anticipate but there’s a lot of positives so we’ll see how it goes.”
The Elder Scrolls 6 and Starfield still don’t have confirmed release windows, with some reports claiming that both games are expected to come out for the next generation of console platforms. As for Fallout 76 and The Elder Scrolls: Blades, both games are scheduled to release this year with the former coming out for November 14, 2018, for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC while the latter is planned for release sometime later this year for both iOS and Android.
