This week, Bethesda confirmed that the next game in their mega-selling Elder Scrolls series will be called The Elder Scrolls VI: Sentinel. This was the most substantive information released about the game since a teaser trailer in 2018 confirmed it was in development. But the previous game in the series, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, was released in November 2011. Even granted that Bethesda has released several games in the interim in other series, that's a huge amount of time to wait for a game that should be a licence to print money, and if it turns out not to be, the immense wait for it will clearly be the main factor. So why is it taking so long?
Bethesda Game Studios was founded in 1986, and this week celebrated its 40th anniversary. During its first few years of existence, it focused on ports, taking games from one system and making them work on another. Their early work for EA Sports provided a steady income stream and allowed the team to consider their dream project: a vast, sprawling fantasy RPG set in a fully open world you could explore at your leisure. This resulted in The Elder Scrolls: Arena (1994), which featured the entire continent-spanning Empire of Tamriel in a rudimentary way, and then The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall (1996). Daggerfall "zoomed in" on the Iliac Bay region, consisting of the northern half of the province of Hammerfell and the southern half of the province of High Rock. Sentinel, the capital city of Hammerfell, appeared in both games. Despite taking place in an ostensibly tiny area of the map covered in Arena, Daggerfall was a much bigger game with thousands of procedurally-generated dungeons, towns and cities, mixing optional side-quests with a main storyline. The game was a big success.
Following a financial crisis triggered by the failure of two action-oriented spin-off games, Battlespire (1997) and Redguard (1998), Bethesda was bought out by Zenimax Media who provided the funding for The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (2002). The game brought the gigantic scale of the first two games down to earth, with a much smaller, more easily explorable map packed with side-quests, random encounters and interesting creatures as well as a compelling main plot. It was also the first game in the series to launch on console, the original Xbox, where it sold surprisingly well and began Bethesda's association with Microsoft, which became more formal in 2021 when Microsoft bought Zenimax Media and all its subsidiaries, including Bethesda. Morrowind was credited alongside Grand Theft Auto III (2001) with starting the modern age's obsession with vast open worlds and immense player choice.
Given Morrowind's success, the company was on firmer footing going into the next game, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. With development going well and switching from pre-production to full development around 2004, the team realised their pre-production team would not have anything to do, so looked around for another project. Having worked on Elder Scrolls games almost non-stop since somewhere around 1992, they were keen to bring in another style of game and genre to work on. Bethesda head honcho Todd Howard had been a huge fan of the Fallout games created by Black Isle Studios and released by Interplay, then consisting of Fallout (1997), Fallout 2 (1998) and Fallout Tactics (2001). Interplay was collapsing, so Bethesda were able to buy the Fallout IP relatively cheaply in 2004 and they decided to immediately start work on Fallout 3, with the idea being the game would be a first-person experience using a similar structure and format to The Elder Scrolls.
This started the Bethesda practice of "leapfrogging," where work would begin on the next-but-one-game years before the next game even came out. This reduced the wait for a new game and provided very firm foundations for the development team, since they'd start work on the next game with all the fundamental questions like setting, map size, mechanics, concept art etc already worked out rather than mixing the pre-production and full development processes, a mistake made by many other companies. This process has become more common in the industry, with, for example, Rockstar Games doing something similar.
So in this early period, Oblivion started development around 2002 and was released in 2006. Around 2004 the pre-production team started work on Fallout 3, which then entered full development in 2006 and was released in 2008. The pre-production team had already moved on to The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, with the earliest pre-production work taking place around 2006. And so on. Noclip's informative documentary about Bethesda confirmed this with a concept artist confirming he had started designing new weapons for Fallout 4 in the same month that Fallout 3 was released, in late 2008, a full seven years before Fallout 4 was actually released in late 2015.
This should not be oversimplified, of course. As teams and individuals wrap up their work on one game, they may transition to the next game weeks or months ahead of another individual or team. It's not like the entire main development team of Fallout 3 halted work on the game the second it went gold and was immediately starting on Skyrim the next day. This is especially complicated by the presence of DLC for the games, with smaller teams still working on the previous title months or a year or even more after release providing new content, whilst most of their colleagues are now working on the next full game. The transition from pre-production to full development can therefore be more of a gentle segue than a hard pivot. It's also not the case that the pre-production team are necessarily completely isolated from the full dev team, with people wearing more than one hat, and new weapon designs or location ideas being needed from concept artists even relatively late in full dev due to story changes or technical choices. The writers may be focused on pre-production for the next game, but still be tweaking the script and dialogue for the current one right up to recording.
Still, it emphasises that during Bethesda's "Golden Age," running roughly from 2002 to 2015, when they developed and released five large, open-world RPGs, the games did not take as fast to develop as they looked. It's clear that in the almost-identical time period since then, the process has changed or become more complicated, as they have only released one large, open-world RPG (regarded, fairly or not, as lacklustre), a multiplayer spin-off and a remaster (that was largely the work of a different company). Obviously game development has simply gotten more complicated, with vastly superior visuals requiring much more work. Sub-2K assets needed for Oblivion have been replaced by 4K assets which have four times the graphical fidelity and even more times the work. Expectations for animation, physics and lighting are vastly beyond what they used to be. Gamer expectations now are that open-world games should be very long, providing hundreds of hours of content, whilst with the likes of Oblivion and Fallout 3, a player could see pretty much everything the games had to offer in under fifty hours. A game with 150 quests will simply take longer to develop than one with 50, and a game with 75 dungeons will take longer to develop than one with 30, and so on. In a way, Bethesda themselves created this problem with the repeatable side content in Skyrim, which allowed players to build up, in some cases, thousands of hours in the game. For all the promises of new technology, faster tools and, now, AI speeding up development, in almost every case, with every new generation, it takes longer.
But still, it's clear something has gone amiss. This is an oversimplification, if not a gross one, but we can say the Golden Age development period looked something like this:
Morrowind: released 2002.
Oblivion: pre-production 2002, full development 2004, released 2006.
Fallout 3:pre-prod 2004, full dev 2006, released 2008.
Skyrim: pre-prod 2006, full dev 2008, released 2011.
Fallout 4: pre-prod 2008, full dev 2011, released 2015.
After this, the situation became murkier and less clear, not to mention somewhat contradictory, in some cases.
We know that Todd Howard had come up with the concept for Starfield, their big space RPG, in the late 1990s, and for a while Bethesda briefly flirted with the idea whilst they held the video game licence to the Traveller tabletop IP. With the success of Fallout 3, it appears that Howard returned to the idea, but Zenimax were still sceptical of juggling two franchises, let alone three. The immense success of Skyrim, which sold over 12 million copies in its first week on sale alone, seems to have given Howard the leverage to make Starfield the next project after Fallout 4. We know the title was trademarked in 2013, suggesting that pre-production on the game began after Skyrim's release, either in late 2011 or some time in 2012. Thanks to leaked images, we know that by 2018 the game had something of a playable build, a UI similar to that in the final game, and spacesuits and habitats similar to those in the final release.
However, a chaos grenade was thrown into the mix thanks to the project known as "multiplayer Fallout." Fans had been asking for Bethesda games to include co-op multiplayer since almost the dawn of the company, with multiplayer mods being among the most popular for all their titles. Bethesda had co-operated with Zenimax Online Studios to produce The Elder Scrolls Online, released in 2014 to a reasonable reception and still going today, but that was much more of a traditional MMORPG, in the vein of World of WarCraft, rather than the experience fans really wanted. With Zenimax keen to leverage the income stream from a successful multiplayer title, it was decided to add a comprehensive multiplayer mode to Fallout 4. Early results suggested this was not a good idea, the map had been developed as an intense single-player experience and was too small to support tons of players, whilst Bethesda had little experience in online technical systems and Bethesda's propriety Creation Engine had not been designed with multiplayer in mind.
Zenimax assigned BattleCry Studios, based in Austin, Texas, to help Bethesda. Renamed Bethesda Game Studios Austin (the main BGS HQ is in Bethesda, Maryland, hence the name), the newer studio specialised in multiplayer and online netcode. Very quickly, the project expanded in scope from Fallout 4's multiplayer mode to a standalone title, with its own, much larger map. The creative team at Maryland also decided to make the game a prequel to the entire series, so as not to tread on the toes of whatever decisions they took in later singleplayer games, and to reassure fans that the online games were not supplanting their traditional singleplayer, immersive experiences (The Elder Scrolls Online is also a prequel, for the same reason). The new game, now named Fallout 76 to emphasise it was a spin-off rather than a mainline sequel, would also depend on players for a lot of its ecosystem and development, meaning that the traditional, time-consuming development activities of writing and character-building would be minimised. The game also reused a lot of Fallout 4's graphical assets to further speed development. Thanks to all of this, Fallout 76 went from not existing as a concept in 2014 or even early 2015 to being ready for release in late 2018, a remarkably fast turn-around. Despite some claims to the contrary, the introduction of Fallout 76 significantly impacted progress at BGS Maryland, because though Austin handled the technical side of things, all of the creative decisions, story and art design were still handled at Maryland.
"This aged well," - Todd Howard, probably.
Still concerned that Bethesda fans would riot at the perception that Bethesda was going online or multiplayer-only, it was decided to reassure them by announcing their next two games far earlier than Bethesda ideally liked. According to Todd Howard, the platonic ideal for a Bethesda title would be to literally release it with no marketing to avoid the problem of over-hyping the game (a position probably solidified by seeing what over-hyping did to CD Projekt Red's Cyberpunk 2077 in 2020). Short of that, announcing both Fallout 4 and Fallout 76 just four to five months ahead of release had been a big success. He had little interest in telling people what might happen two or four years down the line, especially when delays might happen at any time for any reason and invalidate the promise.
It was therefore with reluctance that Howard announced in June 2018 that not just Fallout 76 was coming that November, but that Bethesda were working on the space RPG Starfield, their first new IP in decades and that very early work had already started on The Elder Scrolls VI, complete with a short teaser trailer of a rocky, coastal landscape, and both would be traditional single-player experiences. I strongly suspect Howard has regretted that decision ever since.
After Fallout 76 was released in 2018 it was clear that Bethesda had commenced full development on Starfield and pre-production on The Elder Scrolls VI, and that at least some development on Starfield had happened earlier to enable the game to be in a good enough condition for the 2018-dated image leaks to exist. But some people who left Bethesda in this time period have recently expressed surprise when Starfield was internally announced to be the next full project after the release of Fallout 4, which would not be the case if Starfield had been in pre-production since 2011/12. They had been anticipating that Elder Scrolls VI would be the next game, but presumably pre-production on ES6 had not even started, so they should have known that would not be the case. The situation seems very confused compared to the very clear timeline for the Golden Age period.
Subsequent events were at least clearer: Microsoft announced it was acquring Bethesda in 2020 and completed the process in 2021. Starfield got its formal reveal in mid-2021 and confirmation it was targeting a November 2022 release date, a surprising eighteen-month lead time (more than three times that allocated to Fallout 4 and 76), indicating either that Microsoft wanted much more notice of release dates, or it was decided that as a new IP Starfield needed much more marketing, or both. As it stood, Starfield was delayed by a full year. Apparently the game could have hit its original launch date, but post-Cyberpunk 2077 and its technical issues, Microsoft were concerned about ensuring the game be as optimised as possible.
Starfield finally came out in late 2023 to a somewhat muted reception. The game was fiercely criticised for bland dialogue and the majesty of space travel being reduced to a succession of loading screens (which particularly aged like milk compared to the seamless space-to-ground transitions in No Man's Sky, Elite: Dangerous and, in early access, Star Citizen). There were some good quests, some excellent visual design and Bethesda's best-ever action combat, but the overall feeling was subdued at best, not helped by the game launching in the same month as the iconic, generational RPG Baldur's Gate III and the hugely successful Cyberpunk 2077 expansion Phantom Liberty, which completed that troubled game's redemption story. Comparing 2077's realistic, lived-in nightclubs to Starfield's hilariously polite, sterile ones became a meme for a couple of months. Starfield's muted reception, status as an Xbox/PC exclusive (shutting out the large PlayStation market) and simultaneous release on Xbox Game Pass also meant underwhelming, though far-from-disastrous, sales.
Still, the completion of Starfield meant that full development on The Elder Scrolls VI: Sentinel could begin in earnest, which apparently took place at the start of 2024, whilst a small team continued work on Starfield's expansions (Shattered Space and Terran Armada, both now out). In spring 2025, Bethesda even sprang a welcome surprise on fans by "shadow-dropping" (that is, releasing without fanfare) The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered. Largely the work of companion studio Virtuos, the game had had its graphical interface completely revamped, all of its assets and environments remade in Unreal Engine 5 at a high level of fidelity, and moderate improvements had been made to the game's janky levelling, combat and movement. Though technical problems have persisted since launch, with a very slow patching schedule irritating fans, the sheer beauty of Oblivion Remastered and the reminder of what a bolder, weirder Bethesda Studios was capable of back in the day, saw the game shift over 4 million units in its first week on sale, a remarkable number for a remaster of a twenty-year-old game.
In early 2026, there was a huge shakeup at Microsoft's gaming division. Phil Spencer, the longtime head of Xbox and champion of the Bethesda acquisition, was out, and newcomer Asha Sharma was in. Sharma is, very clearly, not a fan of keeping fans in the dark and not letting people know what's going on, not just with Bethesda but other subsidiary studios including Obsidian, Xbox Game Studios and Activision Blizzard. In short order, she had Bethesda confirm that Fallout 3 Remastered and Fallout: New Vegas Remastered (presumably both from Virtuos) were in development, that they were in pre-production on Fallout 5 as well as working on Elder Scrolls VI, and that Activision Blizzard were developing both Diablo 5 and a new StarCraft game, the former for 2029 and the latter for 2030 (even releasing a trailer for the latter). She tweeted about sampling a playable build of Elder Scrolls VI and even teased its title as Elder Scrolls VI: ********, which was retweeted by Bethesda itself and led to intense fan speculation (which, to their credit, quickly settled on Sentinel as the most likely title).
All of this activity led to speculation that Sentinel was much closer to release than people realised, with subreddits and online groups landing on late 2027 as a possibility. However, with it becoming increasingly clear that Bethesda are targeting the 30th anniversary of the release of the original Fallout (23 October) as the release window for Fallout 3 Remastered, even down to hosting a huge event in Washington DC, the setting for the game, this was starting to look unrealistic. With full development on Sentinel only beginning in 2023 at the absolute earliest, a release date just four years or less later seemed optimistic at best. Reports from multiple insiders, passed to journalists like Jason Schreier, confirmed that Bethesda and Microsoft are more thinking more about a late 2028 release date, possibly extending into 2029.
Bearing in mind this, the development period for the post-Golden Age of Bethesda may now look something like this:
Fallout 4: pre-prod 2008, full dev 2011, released 2015.
Fallout 76: full dev 2015, released 2018, updated a lot to make up for the lack of pre-prod and dev ever since.
Starfield: pre-prod 2012, part-time dev 2015, full-time dev 2018, released 2023 (problems due to COVID, new tech and Fallout 76 disrupting the schedule).
Sentinel: pre-prod 2018, full dev 2023, release 2028-29? Possibly early pre-prod in 2012-15 when Zenimax were still considering what game to make next.
Fallout 5: pre-prod 2023, full dev after Sentinel's release.
You can immediate see this schedule is way more chaotic, caveated and complex than for the earlier games, and it's much more arguable how things like COVID, new tech, the Microsoft acqusition and now the changing of gears at Microsoft with a new CEO, impacted development of the games.
Of course fans are not all interested in this behind-the-scenes guff. From the POV of a casual Elder Scrolls enjoyer, Skyrim came out in 2011, sold 65 million copies (and climbing) and, fifteen years later, the sequel is still only lurking on the distant horizon, despite getting a teaser trailer in 2018 and another teaser trailer in 2026. The situation is clearly far from ideal. Bethesda would argue their communication has been straightforward and was designed to keep fans in the loop and not give them unrealistic expectations, but it's also clear from this week's events that this was unsuccessful, and has put more pressure on the studio to control the situation and make a game that, after the underwhelming Starfield and arguably underwhelming Fallout 4 (plus Elder Scrolls Online and Fallout 76, which may be great online games but not what a large amount of fans wanted), has to deliver big time.
The collapse of BioWare, a one-time competitor of Bethesda in the RPG space, amidst Microsoft's trigger-happiness in closing down studios, is preying on fans' minds. Bethesda are at least vastly financially more solvent than BioWare, all of their recent games have sold well or delivered big numbers on Game Pass, and they have multiple games in development, some close to release such as Fallout 3 Remastered, which is likely under a year away. Bethesda are not going to collapse any time soon, but fans can be forgiven for being nervous.
What will be interesting is to see what happens next. Further Sentinel trailers are likely, and possibly sooner rather than later, with more information about the game likely to trickle out in 2027, possible with a full-blown trailer sometime that year (a surprise double-tap approach, with a full trailer before the end of this year, is unlikely but possible). Grand Theft Auto VI is going to suck up all the gaming discussion oxygen for a while, so Bethesda may decide to hold fire before spinning up marketing in full on the game. But at least we know what the game is called, it's on its way, and though the development time has been long and, at times inexplicably long, we know we're closer to the end of the process than the start. Bethesda now just has to deliver.
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Bethesda Game Studios are celebrating their fortieth anniversary and, as part of the celebration, Todd Howard has confirmed that The Elder Scrolls VI will be called Sentinel. The game will be the long, long-awaited follow-up to the mega-selling Skyrim (2011), though exactly how long we'll have to wait for it remains unclear, since the teaser does not mention a release date. However, according to reliable reporter Jason Schreier, Bethesda are targeting a late 2028 release window for the game.
Bethesda created the Elder Scrolls franchise in the early 1990s, partially derived from the Dungeons & Dragons games helmed by some of the staff there, though with some added metaphysical twists. The franchise kicked off with The Elder Scrolls: Arena (1994), which saw the player travelling across the vast continent-spanning Empire of Tamriel. The game was a modest success, but its sequel, The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall (1996), was a much bigger hit. The game allowed tremendous freedom in a truly colossal open world (a roughly 1:1 scale map about the same size as the island of Britain) but was famously janky and buggy. Two action-focused spin-offs, Battlespire (1997) and Redguard (1998), were financial failures that pushed the company close to bankruptcy before it was rescued by Zenimax Media. Bethesda then embraced both modern 3D technology and a strategic alliance with Microsoft for their Xbox consoles to deliver The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (2002) and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (2006), the former making them critical darlings and the latter being their first big, smash-hit game.
Bethesda had bought the Fallout IP from the collapsing Interplay and developed Fallout 3 (2008), whilst collaborating with Obsidian Entertainment on Fallout: New Vegas (2010). Bethesda later returned to that franchise solo with Fallout 4 (2015) and the online game Fallout 76 (2018). Inbetween they released The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim in 2011. Still their biggest-selling game, with over 65 million copies solid, Skyrim has infamously been re-released multiple times on different generations of hardware with one full graphical remaster, as well as substantial mod support and two large and several small expansions. The game's multi-generational, perennial popularity is remarkable, with just under 30,000 people playing the game right now on Steam alone.
Given Skyrim's immense success, it was assumed that Bethesda would return to the Elder Scrolls world after the release of Fallout 4 (and the unexpected making of Fallout 76, a radical expansion of what had originally been a planned multiplayer mode for Fallout 4), and indeed, this appears to have been the expectation. However, Todd Howard had long dreamed of making a space opera video game involving travel to different planets, inspired by the Traveller tabletop roleplaying game (which Bethesda had briefly licensed in the late 1990s). The result was Starfield, released in 2023 to a muted reception. In the meantime, Bethesda's sister-team at Zenimax Online Studios had released The Elder Scrolls Online (2014), which was well-received but not regarded as a substitute for the next proper Elder Scrolls experience.
Frustration also mounted given that Bethesda had teased the existence of The Elder Scrolls VI in 2018 with a very brief trailer, but little information was subsequently released. Bethesda had revealed the existence of the game to allay fears that The Elder Scrolls Online would stop the development of new single-player titles (as had occurred at Blizzard with the release of World of WarCraft forestalling the release of new single-player games in the original strategy series).
The province of Hammerfell in western Tamriel, located north-west of Cyrodiil (where Oblivion was set) and south-west of Skyrim. Hammerfell and High Rock to its north were the setting for Daggerfall, whilst the isle of Stros M'Kai was the setting for action spin-off Redguard.
It appears now that pre-production of The Elder Scrolls VI had originally been planned to start after the release of Fallout 4, but the introduction and development of Fallout 76 prevented much headway from being made. Pre-production began properly in 2018 after Fallout 76's launch with the main development team moving to Starfield. Starfield's protracted development (including a year-long delay late in the day) seemed to impact work on Elder Scrolls VI, with full development of the latter not beginning until early 2024, shortly after the release of Starfield. Despite this, some fans had theorised that Bethesda's expanded headcount (the company has more than quadrupled in size since Skyrim's release), new technology, possible parallel development and the relative straightforwardness of Sentinel's development compared to Starfield, which required many new gameplay systems and ideas, would allow the game to get out the door much faster, potentially in 2027.
The failure to provide a launch window for the game suggests 2027 is now off the table, not to mention Bethesda is expected to launch Fallout 3 Remastered on 23 October next year at a special event in Washington DC, so would not want to clash with that in any case. Jason Schreier's reporting indicates late 2028, with a potential delay into 2029, may be more realistic in this case. That would mean a near-eighteen year gap between titles in the series, even more startling than the thirteen-year gap between Grand Theft Auto games.
Bethesda have also confirmed the title gives a clue to the game's location. In Elder Scrolls lore, Sentinel is the capital city of the western province of Hammerfell, home of the legendary warriors known as the Redguards. Daggerfall was previously set in the northern half of Hammerfell and the southern half of neighbouring High Rock, with Sentinel as a visitable location. Whether Sentinel includes all of Hammerfell plus all of High Rock, or again parts of both is unknown. The brief teaser also ends with a quote dated 4E 206 (the 206th year of the Fourth Era), five years after the events of Skyrim, suggesting the game may take place in that time period.
Bethesda have also confirmed that Fallout 5 is in pre-production, and they are collaborating with Obsidian Entertainment once again on a new Fallout game.
Elder Scrolls fans have become a patient breed, with developers Bethesda clocking in almost fifteen years since the release of the last mainline game in the series, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Skyrim has sold over 60 million copies to become one of the best-selling individual video games of all time, so fans are understandably antsy over when the sequel will be released.
Bethesda did confirm way back in 2018 that The Elder Scrolls VI was in development, allaying fears after the release of multiplayer spin-off prequel, The Elder Scrolls Online. However, with Bethesda all-in on developing Fallout 4 (2015), Fallout 76 (2018) and Starfield (2023), the game had to take a back seat, with full-time development only beginning after Starfield's release three years ago. The game is now Bethesda's main focus, but when to expect it is a key question. Even a six-year development window these days feels quite short, but that would still mean the game not appearing before late 2029, potentially even drifting into the 2030s. Hopefully Bethesda have had a second team working on the game to ensure we get it before then.
Whilst that question will not be answered for some considerable time, another one has been hinted at: what the game will be called. Asha Sharma, the head of Xbox at Microsoft, tweeted that she had seen a playthrough of Elder Scrolls VI and been very impressed (presumably less-impressed at the protest outside Bethesda's Rockville HQ against recent layoffs). Most notably, she called it The Elder Scrolls VI: ********. To emphasise this, Bethesda tweeted back that it was awesome to be able to show her "********." This would seemingly emphasise that the game's title consists of eight letters and one word.
Previous Elder Scrolls games have largely had titles built around locations. The third and fifth games, Morrowind and Skyrim, are named after provinces of the Empire of Tamriel. The first game, Arena, and spin-off game Battlespire are named after individual buildings (though "the Arena" is an archaic name for the whole continent as well). The fourth game, Oblivion, was named after a plane of existence. Spin-off games Redguard and Blades are named after factions within the universe.
With the sixth game widely believed to take place in western Tamriel, in the provinces of High Rock and Hammerfell, this opens up some intriguing possibilities for the game's title.
The Elder Scrolls VI: Sentinel is a noisome title. Sentinel is the name of the capital city of Hammerfell, and likely a key location in the game.
The Elder Scrolls VI: Dominion sounds pretty good. The series metaplot has focused on the rise of the Aldemari Dominion and its challenge to the power of the Empire. This was explored in a key questline in Skyrim. Fans have been theorising that the full-scale confrontation between the Empire and the Dominion, possibly in Hammerfell, is a likely storyline in the sixth game.
The Elder Scrolls VI: Orsinium. Orsinium is a major city-state and kingdom in High Rock, and is the home of Tamriel's civilised orcish civilisation.
The Elder Scrolls VI: Redguard. The Redguards are the primary inhabitants of Hammerfell and are one of the setting's most popular factions. However, no main series game has been named after a faction before. Also, a 1998 action spin-off game was called The Elder Scroll Adventures: Redguard, which might get confusing. That game is very old though and extremely obscure (as well as likely the franchise's least-selling title), and the title is pretty good, so don't put it past Bethesda to reuse it.
The Elder Scrolls VI: Highrock. Maybe the developers have decided to lose the space.
Hopefully this is a hint we might get more information about the game soon, but it's really past time.
Of course, it might be the eight characters were totally random and none of this actually means anything, but fans are so devoid of clues that they'll take anything at this point.
Bethesda have issued a major update on their game projects and franchises, confirming that they are deep in development on Elder Scrolls VI, in pre-production on Fallout 5 and are partnering with Obsidian Entertainment on a new Fallout game. They also confirm that remasters for both Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas are in development.
There's quite a lot packed into the update. They confirm that Fallout 4 (2015) has surpassed 35 million sales since a boost from the popularity of the TV series. Online game Fallout 76 (2018) continues to see new expansions, and next year's big expansion, Raven Rock, will act as a prequel to Fallout 3 (2008).
That makes more sense as Bethesda have confirmed that Fallout 3 Remastered is now in development, and presumably will launch in 2027. That matches the leaked timescale some time ago that predicted a two-year gap between Oblivion Remastered (2025) and Fallout 3 Remastered. More intriguingly, they confirm that Fallout: New Vegas Remastered is also in development. This makes sense as FO3 and New Vegas share a lot of assets, so updating the former means you've also done a lot of work for the latter already.
Bethesda are also planning a special event for the 30th Anniversary of the original Fallout on October 10th next year, with a special event in Washington DC (it might be smart money to circle that potential date for Fallout 3 Remastered's release, as FO3 is set in DC).
Bethesda confirmed last week's rumour that a new Fallout game is in development at Obsidian, and also went further by confirming that this game will be a new spin-off title like New Vegas, not Fallout 5 (though this is somewhat a distinction without much of a difference). Fallout 5 itself is in pre-production at Bethesda themselves, but they will not be able to start full production until work on The Elder Scrolls VI is completed. They confirm that ES6 remains their current priority and is currently looking in a good shape, but no release date is projected (previous leaks suggest the game won't launch until 2028-29 at the earliest). They also confirm that The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has now surpassed 65 million sales and Starfield has passed 17 million in sales.
This news confirms Microsoft's decision to have its studios pivot to their most famous and popular franchises and shorten development timelines (and thus costs). By the time Elder Scrolls VI launches, it will be around eighteen years since Skyrim was released, a huge amount of time to expect fans to wait between games.
It will be interesting to see when we start getting more information on these developments, such as confirmation of ES6's subtitle and setting.
As has been widely reported elsewhere, Microsoft have embarked on a massive restructuring of their video game business. Thousands of staff are to be laid off and around five studios are to be sold or spun off into independent businesses. Even the company's more successful studios are being reconfigured, with Obsidian Entertainment re-tasked to help Microsoft focus on its most successful IP. To this end, according to highly reliable industry insider Jason Schreier, Microsoft have commissioned Obsidian to make a new game in the Fallout series.
Obsidian Entertainment were founded in 2003 but many of the key founders had previously worked for Black Isle Studios, formerly the internal development studio at Interplay. There, several staff had worked on Fallout (1997), Fallout 2 (1998) and the original Fallout 3: Van Buren, which was cancelled when Interplay collapsed around 2003. The IP was sold in full to Bethesda Game Studios, who proceeded to develop Fallout 3 (2008), Fallout 4 (2015) and the multiplayer-focused Fallout 76 (2018). However, Bethesda partnered with Obsidian to develop Fallout: New Vegas (2010), often (but not universally) cited as the best game in the series.
In the meantime, the Fallout franchise has acquired a substantially more massive fanbase, with the arrival of the Fallout TV series on Amazon Prime Video in 2024. The show has already produced two seasons and a third began shooting this week. There have also been new tabletop games. Aside from the ongoing development of Fallout 76 through expansions, Bethesda had admitted they were still years away from starting work on Fallout 5 due to their prior commitments to Starfield (2023) and its DLC, and the in-progress Elder Scrolls VI, which will be the sequel to the 60 million+ selling Skyrim (2011). Also according to Schreier, The Elder Scrolls VI is not expected to be released before 2028 at the earliest, likely punting off any Fallout 5 to the early-to-mid 2030s, by which time the TV show will almost certainly be over.
The only Fallout game on the horizon is Fallout 3 Remastered, which has not been formally confirmed but reliable leaks suggest it is in development as a co-production between Bethesda and Virtuos Studios, who previously handled The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered (2025).
Obsidian were acquired by Microsoft in 2018 and have since released The Outer Worlds (2019), Grounded (2022), Pentiment (2022), Avowed (2025) and The Outer Worlds 2 (2025). Grounded 2 is currently in Early Access.
Obsidian's regular release cadence has been extremely impressive by modern standards, especially compared to other Microsoft studios (in the same timeframe, Bethesda have only released Starfield). However, these games' critical and commercial success has been mixed; Pentiment was a critical darling but a low-key release that sold only moderately. Grounded is Obsidian's most successful game in its history, acquiring over 20 million players in a couple of years (shading even Fallout: New Vegas's success), but has largely gone unrecognised due to its perceived children's focus and not being in Obsidian's usual core RPG wheelhouse. Avowed did reasonably well (over 6 million players in its first month on sale) whilst Outer Worlds 2 was a major commercial disappointment, with both games reviewing only moderately. Grounded 2 has picked up some major plaudits in Early Access, but is largely being developed by an external partner studio.
As part of the strategic shift, work on Avowed 2 has been downgraded, with a small team to continue work whilst most shift to the Fallout game. An unannounced major new RPG project, claimed by ex-Obsidian founder Chris Avellone to be set in the Shadowrun universe, has been paused, again with the team expected to be redeployed to the Fallout game. Work on the DLC for The Outer Worlds 2 is expected to be completed shortly.
The new Fallout game will apparently be headed by Josh Sawyer, who was previously the director of Fallout: New Vegas. New Vegas writer John Gonzalez, as well as Fallout co-creators Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky, are all working at Obsidian and may work on this new project as well.
No information about the game's setting or title is known, and may still be in flux as apparently this strategic decision may have only been made this week. Microsoft are likely to want to call the game Fallout 5 to capitalise on interest in the series and the length of time since the last mainline release, but whether that's the case remains to be seen.
Amazon have released the first trailer for the second season of their Fallout TV series.
The trailer confirms the second season will be set in and around the city of New Vegas, Nevada, the same setting as the iconic 2010 video game Fallout: New Vegas. The TV show will revisit some of the same locations and factions, including the Strip and the Lucky 38 casino, the robot Victor, the Novac dinosaur, the antagonistic Caesar's Legion and the enigmatic Mr. House, now played by The Leftovers' Justin Theroux. The show also hints at a civil war within the Brotherhood of Steel, the first show appearance for the Deathclaw (Fallout's most iconic monster), and even suggests that VATS - the PipBoy-generated targeting system which seems to slow down time to allow for better combat reactions - might be an in-universe thing (or it might just be really cool slowmo).
Fallout's second season debuts on Amazon Prime Video on 17 December this year. After the massive success of the first season, the show has already been renewed for a third season, presumably to follow in 2027.
As was prophesised in the ancient texts (well, yesterday), Bethesda Game Studios have announced and released their remake of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion on the same day. The game is available right now on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC.
French studio Virtuos created the remaster, working under the watchful eye of Bethesda. The game features a completely reworked graphics engine, with Unreal Engine 5 now handling rendering, though the original GameBryo Engine is apparently still working somewhere under the hood. Every graphical asset in the game was recreated from scratch and some areas have been given a serious glow-up. The game's infamously janky levelling system has been reworked, and combat is more responsive. The game has added new combat animations and physics reactions, and the voice cast has been hugely expanded with many new voice actors added. However, the original voice actors' performances (including Sir Patrick Stewart and Sean Bean) have also been preserved. As expected, the remaster includes both the Knights of the Nine and Shivering Isles expansions.
The Skyblivion remake mod team can take some heart from the fact that Oblivion Remastered appears to not have thoroughly reworked area design or the game's infamously samey dungeons. Skyblivion has focused on expanding those areas of the game, which should be a major improvement. Skyblivion has committed to a 2025 release date as well.
The same leaks indicating the existence of Oblivion Remastered a few months ago also claimed that Bethesda are working on Fallout 3 Remastered, which is also a very interesting prospect.
Bethesda have confirmed they will be making a big announcement about The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered tomorrow, April 22nd 2025, at 11am EST, 8am PST and 4pm BST. This follows weeks of speculation and leaks about the game, and widespread rumours the game would be "shadow-dropped" (released with absolutely no preamble or warning) today.
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion was originally released in 2006 as, obviously, the fourth game in that venerable series, following on from Arena (1994), Daggerfall (1996) and Morrowind (2002). Only one additional game in the mainline series has been released since then, the infamous Skyrim (2011), although The Elder Scrolls Online (2014) has kept some attention on the franchise. Bethesda have confirmed that The Elder Scrolls VI (no subtitle confirmed) is their next project but no release date has been mooted.
Oblivion was noteworthy for its very impressive graphics (for the time), its status as a unit-shifter for the Xbox 360 console (the game was later also released on PlayStation 3), its huge open-world environment, outstanding and quirky side-quests and its employment of top vocal talent, including Patrick Stewart and Sean Bean. The game eventually saw some criticism for its weird levelling mechanics, the tiny pool of voice actors (often leading to two NPCs with identical voices talking to one another) and the irritating Oblivion Gates, which had a tendency to crop up and interfere with whatever side-quest the player was trying to do at the time. The game was also seen as too much of a standard fantasy, after the extremely weird Morrowind; Skyrim was seen as a more halfway house between Oblivion's conservatism and Morrowind's bizarre experimentation. Finally, Oblivion was the first high-profile game to feature paid DLC, in the form of the infamous "horse armour" upgrade, which some players despise to this very day. Still, Oblivion was well-regarded for its atmosphere, rich assortment of weaponry, interesting bestiary of enemies and its extremely epic conclusion.
Given the number of times that Skyrim has been upgraded, remastered and re-released, fans had been speculating for years about the same attention being given to Oblivion, giving it broadly shares similar technology and a graphics style to the later game (Skyrim's Creation Engine being only a moderate development of Oblivion's GameBryo Engine). Bethesda themselves always seemed cool on the idea, saying they'd rather spend time working on a new game and pointing to numerous fan projects doing similar things. Oblivion has had mods available for many years to improve its mechanics and graphics, to a point.
However, Bethesda may have been slightly disingenuous, having outsourced development of the remaster to Virtuous Studios whilst maintaining oversight from afar.
News broke in 2023 that Bethesda were planning remakes of both Oblivion and Fallout 3 as far back as 2020, as well as considering a Dishonored 3 from their subsidiary studio Arkane. Dishonored 3 never happened - Arkane instead released Deathloop and Redfall, and are now making a video game based on the Marvel character Blade - leading to scepticism about the other claims. These were emphasised by the impressive and sterling work done on the unofficial fan remaster Skyblivion, which was of a very high quality and had committed to a 2025 release, leading to speculation that Bethesda might consider that project for an official release.
Based on the (mostly credible) leaks, Oblivion Remastered will include expansions Knights of the Nine and Shivering Isles (and, yes, the horse armour) and will release on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC, and will be available on Game Pass on both PC and Xbox. The game's graphics have been reworked from the ground up, possibly in Unreal Engine 5, with significant visual upgrades. The UI, combat and levelling also appear to have been reworked for a more modern feel. To what degree other elements have been upgraded is unclear; Skyblivion has redesigned every fort, cave and dungeon in the game to be larger, more expansive and more unique, but it's unclear if Remastered has gone that far.
It's also unclear if tomorrow will be an announcement about the remaster or just the actual straight-up release of the game. We will need to see how that unfolds.
The developers of fan mega-mod Skyblivion, which seeks to update venerable fantasy RPG The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (2006) to modern-ish standards, have re-committed to releasing the game in 2025, as they originally promised two years ago. The project is almost feature-complete, with developers and testers now able to run through entire quests, as they have demonstrated in a new video.
The original idea behind the project was to remake Oblivion in the upgraded Creation Engine of its successor, Skyrim (2011). However, the project stalled after several years and was relaunched before the pandemic under new management. The title is somewhat misleading, as the game now features improvements from later versions of the engine and features from other modders, including better 4K textures and enhanced lighting. The mod is also not a straightforward remake, as it redesigns and enhances some areas of the games, for example replacing the identikit caves with different designs based on their descriptions (i.e. mines and random caverns no longer look identical) and making the infamously tiny forts larger and more imposing. The city of Leyawiin, which was massively scaled back in development, has been returned to its original, imposing design straddling a major river with a drawbridge to allow ships to pass.
The creators have kept in touch with Bethesda during development to confirm what they can and can't do: they've kept the original soundtrack and even added to it with new material, but have had to re-record all dialogue for legal reasons (presumably the need not to pay Sean Bean and Patrick Stewart lots of money again). This will probably be a boon, as Oblivion infamously had a tiny voice cast, and it wasn't uncommon to stumble across three people with the exact same voice talking to one another, which was weird.
Playing the mod will require the player owns copies of both Oblivion and Skyrim. As noted before, the plan is to release the mod before the end of 2025 via Steam, GoG and Nexus Mods. A console version is currently impossible due to the massive size of the new files (which outsizes the limits Bethesda put in place for console modding).
In 2023 it was rumoured that Bethesda were considering their own remaster of Oblivion, which sounds like an exercise in futility compared to the scale of Skyblivion. It'll be interesting to see if that project is actually something that's happening.
1937, Marshall College, Connecticut. Renowned archaeologist Indiana Jones is back teaching when an imposing man breaks into the college and steals an ancient cat mummy. An incensed Jones pursues the man, following clues to the Vatican, where the Catholic Church is negotiating a delicate coexistence with Mussolini's fascist government. Allying with an old friend and an intrepid Italian reporter searching for her missing sister, Jones runs afoul of an old German nemesis and embarks on an epic journey that will take him all over the world in pursuit of the greatest archaeological discovery of all time.
Indiana Jones is one of the most beloved film franchises of all time, with the collaboration between Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Harrison Ford delivering two of the best action-adventure films ever made, two okay ones and one stinker (your mileage may vary on which is which), whilst also delivering a ton of decent spin-off media, including books and a TV show. However, the franchise has often faltered in the sphere of video games. A lot of titles have been generic action games wearing a Fedora and leather whip skin, diverting but not really nailing the spirit of the movies or the character. Arguably the last all-time classic Indiana Jones video game was Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, released way back in 1992.
Now there's a new challenger. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle has an original story and was developed by Machinegames - best known for the Wolfenstein action series - for Bethesda and Microsoft. The game is mostly played from a first-person perspective, and sees the player controlling Indiana as he goes on a round-the-world trip to stop the Nazis from getting their hands on a number of powerful, ancient artefacts. Harrison Ford declined to return as Indy, so omnipresent voice acting superstar Troy Baker takes up the role, delivering a performance which both nails Ford's sound and cadence, and is a good performance in its own right.
Where The Great Circle really succeeds is taking a step back and thinking thoughtfully about who Indiana Jones is and isn't as a character. Jones is happy to whip out a gun and shoot enemies in a pinch, but he isn't a seasoned sharpshooter. He's happy to sneak up on a bad guy and knock them out, but he's not a stealth assassin. His main skills are deduction, speaking a dozen or more languages, and exploring ancient ruins filled with curiously well-maintained traps. He is also kinda goofy as a character, prone to the occasional terrible joke and being a bit cack-handed, factors which the game also tries to invoke.
As a result, the game allows you to fire guns, but sees this as a fail state and usually this results in you getting overwhelmed, unless you are able to escape in the confusion, or you're dealing with very isolated enemies. Indy is awkward with guns and sometimes panics during reloading, which can be frustrating but does dissuade you from relying on them (headshots or pointblank shotgun blasts not resulting in instant kills is very dumb, though). You can sneak up behind people and knock them out, but doing this with your bare hands is tricky, so grabbing a blunt instrument and whacking them on the back of the head is often a better move. In theory, enemies are supposed to panic and sound the alarm upon discovery of bodies, so you can move bodies elsewhere, but in practice this only seemed to work about half the time, and never if you've moved the bodies from elsewhere. Fighting a bunch of bad guys in the Vatican and hurling their bodies from a balcony just to find the enemies below politely stepping around them without comment was odd.
Indy's most reliable weapon is his straight-from-the-films ability to wear somewhat flimsy disguises and, despite not looking like any locals at all, immediately fit in. Arriving in a new location can see a lot of careful travelling until you find a local uniform and then just stroll into enemy bases. Of course there are ways of still being discovered - enemy officers know who all their men are and will get suspicious at a new guy loitering around - as well as there being drawbacks. Otherwise friendly locals may refuse to help you if they see you in a German military uniform, but you can find local garb or just Indy's standard gear to regain their trust.
The game isn't an open-world affair, but instead has three open-ish maps which you can traverse, each one of which has multiple ruins you can explore, to service the main story, side-quests or optional activities. Penetrating ruins requires some jumping, using your whip to traverse distances or climb to higher exits, and solving puzzles. All of this is done in a very enjoyable way, and after years of solid Tomb Raider and Uncharted games, it's satisfying to see their main inspiration finally getting a game worthy of his name. Optional activities include finding relics for a museum, taking photographs of impressive sights and locating notes on everything from local cuisine to personal correspondence. Indy also spends a lot of time undercover in Italian and German military camps, where he can find locked safes and cases containing useful equipment. There are also collectibles including comic books and more useful skill books, which allow Indy to learn new skills to enhance everything from combat to stealth to improved medical skills.
Structurally, the game has some light Metroidvania elements as you can revisit previous locations with later-acquired skills or equipment to open new areas, although this element is not strongly publicised, and in fact is a bit weird: you have to wait until the game autosaves before leaving for a new location, otherwise anything you've done since will be deleted, and the game's incredibly urgent and pressing storyline means that Indy can't fly between, say, the Vatican and Connecticut willy-nilly, so any re-visits to previous areas is "non-canonical," you're really just remembering your original time in that location in a different way. This is an awkward mechanic that never really feels right, but is necessary since finding all the collectibles and side-objectives on your first visit to an area is almost impossible. It can be amusing to go back to earlier areas after levelling up your fighting skills in later areas, as the blackshirts in the Vatican are laughably easy to take out in fistfights once Indiana as even just moderately improved his unarmed combat. Watching cardinals and nuns step gingerly around a substantial pile of unconscious fascists never stops being entertaining.
You also spend a lot of the game with a companion, in this case Italian journalist Gina Lombardi (Alessandra Mastronardi) who is working hard to expose the dangers of Italian fascism and also looking for her sister, an archaeologist who fell in train with Indy's German rival, Emmerich Voss (Marios Gavrilis, who not so much chews the scenery as gloriously consumes it wholesale). Gina can be useful in helping solve puzzles and provide hints if you get stuck in a particular area, though she does have a slight tendency to get in your way and block doorways (though she gets out of the way sharpish if you have problems). Gina fits right into the classic pantheon of Indy love interests who can hold their own. Voss is also a glorious opponent, prone to tedious pontificating and lording it over Indy despite being mostly reliant on Indy to work out the location of the artefacts and then trying to steal them. Also an honourable mention to the late Tony Todd, who provided a fine performance (mocap and voice) before passing away in November.
Despite the mounds of side-content, the game does not outstay its welcome: I finished the whole game, in fact almost 100%ing it (and only being prevented from doing so by a bug), in a very reasonable 38 hours. It's refreshing to play a game that isn't so overstuffed with optional side-content that it becomes a tedious grind. The game also mixes up its small open-world-ish hub areas with much more focused interstitial levels (like a trip to the Himalayas and a side-visit to Shanghai), which also helps pacing.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle's biggest success is feeling like the Indiana Jones movies. The writing, dialogue and puzzles are all on-point, and the revelation of the final objective of the game is genuinely impressive (to the point you can imagine Spielberg and Lucas cursing as to why they never had that idea). If it was a movie, it would probably be at least the third-best one in the series. Like Batman: Arkham Asylum before it, The Great Circle feels like an authentic, additive entry to its franchise, not just a generic tie-in with some iconography slapped on the top.
The game does have flaws. Although I understand why they made guns awkward to use, there are moments where it can be very frustrating, and headshots not killing someone immediately is daft. The mechanic for revisiting previous location is awkward. The game is graphically beautiful (stunning, in fact) in terms of environments and lighting, but character models aren't quite there and can slip into the uncanny valley (Indy is also prone to making some odd faces and expressions). Idle dialogue can be gratingly repetitive (the sixty-first time Gina reminded me she couldn't swim felt a bit unnecessary). There are also some bugs with the game tripping over itself in trying to track objectives and some achievements not triggering until you run backwards and forwards a few times. During the game's finale a door opened but didn't "really" open, leaving the area beyond an empty void until I worked out how to trigger the proper cut scene. Early patches have eliminated some of these issues but others remain (being on 98% completion despite completing 100% of the game, but the game not recognising the last 2%, is irritating, if inconsequential).
But overall, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle (****½) is easily the best Indiana Jones video game ever made, true to the spirit of the source material and a cracking good adventure even for casual fans of the franchise. The game is available now on PC and Xbox, and should launch on PlayStation 5 this spring.
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A year ago, Bethesda released Starfield, their massive space RPG that was a decade in the planning. It's fair to say it underwhelmed, despite some enjoyable moments. The game had a laudably weird, off-kilter main storyline and Bethesda's best combat to date, but bland writing, dry characters and a lack of the curated exploration that characterised their best games made it a frustrating experience.
In particular, Starfield suffered from its structure, which encouraged you to jump from star system to star system not via its space travel system but by fast-travelling. Given that both involved faffing around with menus and loading screens rather than engaging in rip-roaring space adventures, why not just do the faster method? Although more efficient, it arguably defeated the object of a space game to mostly avoid the space bit of it.
Shattered Space, the first major Starfield expansion, tries to grapple with this problem head-on. The expansion starts in a very promising way, with you being drawn to an abandoned space station without gravity, and having to fight what appear to be "space ghosts." The mystery of the space station is unusually gripping (by Starfield standards, anyway) and lasts just the right amount of time before you get some exposition which leads you to Va'ruun'kai, the homeworld of House Va'ruun, a faction mostly represented in the mothership game by fanatical space pirates worshipping a great serpent.
Your arrival on Va'ruun'kai is not welcomed and you'd have probably been ventilated in short order, but fortunately there was some kind of "incident" just before you arrived which blew up half the capital city, created gravitation anomalies through the area and brought in yet more space ghosts. Thanks to your knowledge of weird space phenomena from the OG game (and the incredible desperation of the planet's leader), you're recruited to help them out even if you're not totally convinced that their big space serpent god is actually a thing.
After the initial space station episode, the entire game takes place on Va'ruun'kai. The generously-sized new map is handcrafted and covered with story-critical locations, locations essential to side-quests and even locations just there for you to stumble across in random exploration. This is a huge change from the base game where most planetary areas are procedurally generated with identikit bases with the same layout, and the same small pool of events constantly happening. If anything, Shattered Space might spoil you (well, more) for the main game.
The collection of quests here is a notch above the original game, and occasionally it surprised me. One quest involved helping out a confused elderly gentleman after his daughter and only carer disappeared in the incident. This quest makes a big play for an emotional story - something not so much not in modern Bethesda's normal wheelhouse as not even in their galaxy - and almost pulls it off. A lot of the side-quests tie into the annihilation of half the city and its people, selling it as a big, traumatic event in these people's lives (and perhaps explaining a bit better than usual why they immediately trust the total rando who's shown up to save their arses for them). The main mission chain is more predictable, requiring you to bring the three ruling factions of the city in line by doing favours for them, then recovering vital equipment to allow you to get inside the lab where the incident began. But it's executed at least moderately better than the original game.
Where the expansion falters, not unlike the core game, is in comparison to its forebears and contemporaries. It feels like the expansion is aiming at a similar experience to Fallout 4's splendid expansion Far Harbor, including the hand-crafted smaller map, better story focus, and even its focus on one of your companion characters (Andreja is from this planet and bringing her along can open new dialogue options). But the game isn't quite as compelling as Far Harbor's, which had much more bittersweetness and character depth, and a really thorny moral quandary at the end. Shattered Space is less engrossing, and Andreja's extra ten lines of dialogue or whatever it is can't compare to Nick's much greater direct involvement in the Far Harbor narrative. Also, as a lot of people compared Starfield to Cyberpunk 2077 (both being first-person SF RPGs with an open world) and found it critically wanting, so Shattered Space is not even operating on the same level as Phantom Liberty.
Shattered Space is basically 12-15 hours or so of more Starfield, which some might find a questionable proposition, but the more focused storytelling and characterisation is at least a moderate improvement over the base game, even if that does insanely mean dropping the space travel bit from your sci-fi RPG. Graphically it's very pretty (especially if you're a big fan of purple), and it feels like the environments are a step up over the base game. Still, it's hard to conclude anything different to the original game: Shattered Space (***½) is solid but underwhelming. The expansion requires Starfield to run and is available on PC and Xbox Series X/S, and via the Xbox Game Pass service.
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2296. Two hundred and nineteen years have passed since the world was devastated in the Great War. Tens of thousands of people in the United States survived in vaults, vast underground complexes dedicated to human survival. When Vault 33, under Santa Monica, Los Angeles, is raided by surface dwellers and its Overseer captured, it falls to his daughter Lucy to set out in search of him. She finds her search complicated by an overlapping quest to find a technological gizmo that could save the wasteland, with multiple other factions searching for the same device, including the Brotherhood of Steel and a ghoul bounty-hunter. Lucy has to overcome her initial naivete about the world to accomplish her mission.
Fallout is a video game franchise which has worn a lot of hats over its twenty-seven years in existence. It's been a dark comedy, a horror fable, a tale of political intrigue, a survival story and an action piece. Each one of the nine games to bear the Fallout banner has been notably different from the others, with different emphases on things like comedy, character or worldbuilding. This has made Fallout almost uniquely contentious as a franchise: every game in the series is somebody's favourite (okay, maybe not 2004's terrible action game Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel) or somebody's most reviled. Each game has a different tone and style, and as each game is somebody's first Fallout experience, they go away thinking of that as being "real Fallout" and anything that deviates from that is a mistake.
When you're making a Fallout TV show, that gives the production team a headache. How can you thread the needle between sometimes wildly different source material, with an infamously contentious fanbase, which also appeals to the general audience? It turns out, pretty well.
Fallout: The Show on Television takes advantage of its format to have an ensemble cast. We mostly focus on Lucy (Ella Purnell) as she leaves Vault 33 and steps onto the surface world for the first time and has to contend with its whacky and weird inhabitants, but we also follow the misadventures of Squire Maximus (Aaron Moten) of the Brotherhood of Steel as he tries to rise through the ranks. No less than two storylines follow the character of Cooper Howard (Walton Goggins), the first as he experiences the events leading up to the Great War first-hand, and the second in the present, where Howard, now transformed into an immortal ghoul by radiation, is a bounty hunter searching for the tech-macguffin. Amusingly, these characters map to three distinct playstyles for the game: Lucy as the optimistic do-gooder, Maximus as the bumbling anything-goes character, and Cooper as the murderhobo whose first response to even the merest hint of a challenge is comically over-the-tope ultraviolence.
These characters are surrounded by an utter galaxy of great supporting turns, from the small to the substantial. Johnny Pemberton as Squire Thaddeus steels every scene he's in (and demonstrates what over-encumbrance would look like in real life). Moises Arias has the meatiest dramatic subplot as Lucy's brother, who stays behind in Vault 33 to investigate some weird goings-on at home (ably supported by Dave Register as Cousin Chet). Leslie Uggams (Deadpool's Blind Al) is outstanding as Betty, a senior member of Vault 33's ruling council. Kyle MacLachlan as Lucy's father Hank is obviously brilliant. Lost and Person of Interest's (strangely ageless) Michael Emerson is terrific as a troubled scientist on the run. Matt Berry, Michael Rapaport and Chris Parnell all have small, but memorable moments of scene-stealing excellence. Also a word of approval to the latest incarnation of Dogmeat (sorry, CX404), who is present and correct and portrayed as they would appear in-game (and you start realising that such a canine might not be altogether right in the head).
As excellent as the cast is the production design. Many production designs on adaptations like to change all the designs (presumably so they can put the new designs in their portfolios), but the guys on Fallout clearly just took designs from the games and whack them on screen. The vaults all look like they've been snapped together from the prefab pieces in Fallout 4's Vault-Tec DLC. Even the door buttons look exactly the same. Characters improbably heal quickly from ludicrous injuries by just injecting lore-accurate stimpaks. The creatures are pretty much high-res versions from the game, although they do throw in a couple of new entries. The Brotherhood power armour is all fantastic. Nothing's been changed here for the sake of change, and, to paraphrase someone involved in the franchise, it just works.
The TV show certainly is not perfect, though. At eight hours there's a couple of moments of wheel-spinning. The shifts in tone mostly work, but there's a few jarring shifts that aren't as well-signposted. The Vault 33 storyline is a bit thin and is strung out across the entire season through relatively brief sequences, maybe that could have been punched up a little bit. There's one continuity error regarding a date on a chalkboard which caused some fans to freak the hell out, but the debate over that was later shut down (and also by the cliffhanger ending of the season). This isn't a very weighty series, it doesn't have the emotional depth of, say, The Last of Us, but then it's not really aiming for that so that's not much of a complaint.
Fallout: The Gogglebox Version - Season 1 (****) is relentlessly entertaining, well-acted with just the right degree of dark humour, tragedy and horror. It's good pulp entertainment which is both true to the source material but also brings some more interesting ideas to the franchise (like the ensemble cast and the greater focus on the pre-war era). It's not the highest of art, and some will bounce right off it, but it does what it's trying to do with aplomb. The show is available now worldwide on Amazon Prime Television. A second season has already been commissioned.
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