Despite being announced 3 years ago, The Elder Scrolls VI reportedly hasn’t gotten past the design phase ^↺

Speaking to The Telegraph, Bethesda’s Todd Howard had some potentially bad news for Elder Scrolls fans. According to the Bethesda exec, The Elder Scrolls VI is still in its initial design phase, despite having been announced three years ago. 

With Starfield slated for a November 2022 release, this means the Elder Scrolls VI might not make it to digital shelves until 2024 or later. At that point, Skyrim would be nearly 15 years old, and the series would have skipped an entire console generation. 

Todd did, however, say that Bethesda was testing out the technology set to power the next Elder Scrolls game. As with Starfield, The Elder Scrolls VI will be built on the Creation Engine 2. The Starfield in-engine trailer gave us a quick look at the direction Bethesda’s taking with its next-gen rendering tech. Dynamic lighting and material rendering look significantly better than earlier Creation Engine titles like Fallout 4. Polygon counts on objects also appear to have been cranked up high - as the infamous half-eaten sandwich demonstrated. 

While Starfield’s tech looks impressive in the here and now, it’s hard to tell how The Elder Scrolls VI will fare up against other late ninth-gen titles in the years to come.