Bethesda confirm that ELDER SCROLLS VI is in development

Bethesda have confirmed that a sixth game in their Elder Scrolls fantasy roleplaying saga is in development, surprising absolutely no-one. However, they have stressed that this is not a formal announcement of the game, merely the fact that they are working on it. The setting, title and what kind of game it will be all remain to be seen.

The previous Elder Scrolls game, Skyrim, was released in 2011 and was enormously successful, selling tens of millions of copies. A new version of the game, with upgraded graphics, will launch this October on PS4 and XB1. Bethesda's last game, Fallout 4, was released at the end of 2015 and has also been a huge success. Partner company Zenimax Studios released The Elder Scrolls Online two years ago which has been more of a moderate success, and panicked some fans into thinking we weren't going to get a new single-player Elder Scrolls game. This announcement fortunately confirms that this isn't the case and a new CRPG in Tamriel will - eventually - arrive.

According to Bethesda, their plans for the new game are extremely ambitious and rely on technology that is still in development. This suggests that Bethesda may - finally! - be working on a new engine to power the game. They have also said that the game is a long, long way off. I suspect we'll be lucky to see it this side of 2020.

Bethesda have also confirmed that they are working on two other "large projects", and we may hear more about these before The Elder Scrolls VI is officially announced.