We hope you don’t have a busy calendar for the next few years: Bethesda, the studio behind the Elder Scrolls series, has three new games in the works.
The revelation came from Bethesda executive producer Todd Howard, who told Glixel that aside from Fallout 4 VR and the upcoming Nintendo Switch port of Skyrim.
According to Howard, one of the games will be a mobile title along the lines of Fallout Shelter while the other two are titles that will be “classically Bethesda”. Read: really rather big. In fact, they’re going to be on an even larger scale than Bethesda’s previous open world games.
Clear your gaming calendar
Howard told Glixel that as it’s a bigger company now, Bethesda wants “to be putting out more stuff.” The two titles which are of the classic Bethesda scale are being overlapped and worked on simultaneously, though the work is staggered.
“I can't talk a lot about them,” Howard said, “but I can say that they're bigger than anything we've ever done. They're a bit different, but definitely in the wheelhouse that people are used to from us.“
That means they’re likely to be games involving fantasy and post-apocalyptic science fiction with big maps, bigger ambitions and a strong emphasis on roleplaying.
Since it’s been a while since Skyrim’s 2011 release, it’d be natural to assume that the next Elder Scrolls installment is one of these two big titles. However, since Howard said the games are something “a bit different” we’re hesitant to hope for a fresh take on Tamriel any time soon.
In August of last year the studio said that though Elder Scrolls VI was coming, it wasn’t in development and wouldn’t be coming anytime soon.
Considering Howard told Gamespot that Skyrim and Fallout 4 still have “millions” of daily players, these clearly aren’t franchises that need the resuscitation provided by a sequel anyway.
That said, it isn’t impossible that Bethesda has now entered the very early development stages for the next Elder Scrolls title with plans to shake up the series by implementing its something "different" in the areas of storytelling and mechanics, rather than in the game universe being used.
Regardless, it’s nice to think that there are a few new Bethesda titles in development, especially if the developer is willing to keep things fresh.
