Bethesda Didn’t Want To Announce Elder Scrolls VI, but Fans Forced Their Hands

It looks like the fans are to blame for this early announcement about Elder Scrolls VI from Bethesda, and we have all the info!
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The Elder Scrolls Vi Logo Over Mountains
Image: Bethesda

The Elder Scrolls VI is one of the most anticipated games of all time, but apparently, it was not the studio that wanted to announce it. According to Bruce Nesmith, lead designer on Skyrim and senior systems designer for Starfield, Todd Howard didn’t want to tell the world but fans forced his hand.

According to an interview with MinnMax, Todd Howard believes that the video game industry has short memories, and that companies that start touting their games years ahead of time can actually hurt themselves. (Thanks PCGamesN) Nesmith believes this too, and both agree that the best time to start talking about a game, he believes, is six months before release.

Bruce Nesmith uses the words “pitchforks and torches” to describe the pressure that fans were putting on Bethesda to announce The Elder Scrolls VI. This suggests that some fans were becoming quite impatient and even aggressive in their demands for information about the game. They put a lot of pressure on Bethesda to announce the game.

As a result, Bethesda announced The Elder Scrolls VI in 2018, even though they didn’t have a lot of details to share yet. The fans forced the studio’s hand, the studio never thought it was smart to announce games early.

This is why there is such a large gap between the announcement and the release of The Elder Scrolls VI. Bethesda wants to focus on one game at a time, and they don’t want to overhype their upcoming games. They also want to make sure that they have a lot of details to share before they announce a game so that fans don’t have to wait years to learn more about it.

Howard had the idea for the next main installment of The Elder Scrolls at least two years before they started working on it. So for two years they could have announced it, but chose not to. It’s okay that we know it exists, but fans shouldn’t be clamoring for more information from Bethesda when they don’t want to share much.

The whole interview is almost two hours long, but we highly recommend it if you want Bethesda history from someone who worked there.

Jorge A. Aguilar

Jorge A. Aguilar

Jorge A. Aguilar, also known as Aggy, is the current Assigning Editor.

He started his career as an esports, influencer, and streaming writer for Sportskeeda. He then moved to GFinity Esports to cover streaming, games, guides, and news before moving to the Social team where he ended his time as the Lead of Social Content.

He also worked a writer and editor for both Pro Game Guides and Dot Esports, and as a writer for PC Invasion, Attack of the Fanboy, and Android Police. Aggy is the former Managing Editor and Operations Overseer of N4G Unlocked and a former Gaming editor for WePC.

Throughout his time in the industry, he's trained over 100 writers, written thousands of articles on multiple sites, written more reviews than he cares to count, and edited tens of thousands of articles. He has also written some games published by Tales, some books, and a comic sold to Telus International.

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