The Elder Scrolls is very likely one of the most beloved fantasy open-world RPGs in the history of video games. With its rich lore, beautiful and immersive settings, all the tales told via the main stories and side quests, and iconic creatures, like those of Morrowind and the Daedra have made The Elder Scrolls iconic. The series was always very successful, but the game that truly set the bar very high for the whole genre is The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim. It's been almost a decade since Skyrim first released, and despite its many re-releases, many fans are still eagerly waiting for The Elder Scrolls 6 to launch.
The Elder Scrolls 6 was something people talked about for years, even prior to its official announcement at E3 2018. The presentation consisted of a very brief teaser trailer, showing fog, then a seemingly empty rocky and arid landscape facing the ocean, and a stronghold standing over a steep cliff. Many fans, knowing the geography and the ecology of Tamriel, quickly came to the conclusion that the new mainline game will be set in the region of Hammerfell, but that remains speculation for now.
Starfield and its Priority Over The Elder Scrolls 6
Another significant detail that emerged during E3 2018 is that The Elder Scrolls 6 is set to release only after Starfield's launch, the upcoming new IP from Bethesda. At the moment, some players claim that Starfield may launch this year, but it is very likely that it will be postponed to 2022 for several reasons.
First of all, games have lately had the tendency of being released unfinished, either due to unreasonable schedules, or because of other factors. Whatever the reason, players are now diffident and often skeptical about new releases, foreseeing rocky launches, game-breaking glitches, and stuff of the sort. The other reason is that Starfield will release for PC and both Xbox Series S and Series X. With Halo Infinite launching in late 2021, it is unlikely that another triple-A game like Starfield is going to be released as well. More plausible is that it will release next year, maybe paired with other titles, like Obsidian Entertainment's Avowed.
What This Means For The Elder Scrolls 6
Given that The Elder Scrolls 6 will not release prior to Starfield, and that Starfield is likely to be a release for next year rather than 2021, it is in the realms of possibility that fans will have to wait until the second half of 2022 for any news regarding TES 6. The Elder Scrolls 6 may not see the light of day prior to 2023, or at the very best, by the end of 2022.
While this is an unfortunate sentiment for many players, it also goes to show that Bethesda cares about not breaking the development cycle and releasing unfinished products. It's safe to assume that development for The Elder Scrolls 6 began quite some time ago, and that Starfield will simply affect its release date, not its development phase. Also, it is only natural that The Elder Scrolls 6 takes longer than anticipated to release simply because it has the responsibility of being the sequel to Skyrim. Skyrim being one of the most played video games over the past decade likely doesn't help, especially thanks to the modding community keeping the game alive for so long.
Bethesda's Radio Silence Over The Elder Scrolls 6
Considering it has been over one thousand days since The Elder Scrolls 6's first teaser trailer, and given that no further news has come from Bethesda, some fans have begrudgingly started to ask themselves why would Bethesda would bother teasing the game at this point. This has to be one of the weirdest records for a game to break, especially because The Elder Scrolls 6 is not considered to be in so-called "development hell" like many other games before it. So little is known about The Elder Scrolls 6 that it's even hard to hypothesize its current development status.
If news indeed drops only after Starfield's launch, then players will more than likely look at a delay of almost four years since The Elder Scrolls 6's teaser. However, this is not the first time a game is announced with no follow-up news. An example of this is Cyberpunk 2077, which was first announced in May of 2012, following a teaser trailer from January 2013, and then nothing up until 2018's debut trailer came out.
Other games have followed in these footsteps, and others were in development hell for almost a decade. An example of this is Diablo 3, which was first in the works back in 2000, soon after Diablo 2 came out. Then, Blizzard North closed in 2005, and a completely new development cycle was started in 2006, with Diablo 3 finally launching in 2012.
Another unfortunate fate was that of Duke Nukem Forever, which took, well, forever to come out. It was the sequel to Duke Nukem 3D, and it was in development from 1997 to 2011, a total of 14 years. This happened because of a plethora of factors, including the game's engine being switched from Quake 2 to Unreal Engine, and the rights to the whole franchise being sold over to Gearbox Software in 2009.
A game that is more like The Elder Scrolls 6 is Beyond Good and Evil 2, which was in a confusing development state for years, and to this day it is still lacking a release date. The game had been, according to its director, already in production in 2007, but it was scrapped and then officially announced again in 2017 with an official trailer. Four years later, the game is still largely a mystery.
Having said that, Bethesda's silence could be interpreted as a bad thing, but since it was very straightforward about its plans for Starfield this phase may be intended. It's still a very odd choice to announce a game for which news will come only many years later, but it's probably not all bad. Time will tell whether the game will be worth the wait, and for the time being, fans are left to speculate. Hopefully, not for another one thousand days.
The Elder Scrolls 6 is in development.