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Bully for Beth: sequel-itis runs amok in the entertainment industry as it is. Would be nice to see something fresh from Todd and the gang. They always have the safety blanket of their core franchises in case a new project flops.

The worst thing that could happen to the franchise is a panically rushed TES:6 to cover for a flopped Starfield/ESO/new franchise...

That would be bad, though I don't see why Beth would feel pressured to crank out another game in a reckless fashion just because the latest one was a comparative letdown. After a decade long string of critical and commercial blockbusters, you would think their corporate masters have a little more faith in them. I would imagine that people within Beth feel almost owed a shot at another game type, having proven their worth using the old formulas for so long.

Pure speculation of course. I don't work there.

I doubt Bethesda would rush out TESVI. It's their baby and they put a lot of effort into it. If one or both unnamed games flopped, it wouldn't really harm them apart from pride and be a case of "Oh. That didn't work. That is rather hurtful." but they probably have 4 teams at the moment. 1 for TES, 1 for Fallout, both for unnamed IPs. However, I do hope Todd Howard is not in charge of all 4 teams. I just want to see what they could do with another person in charge.

If ESO flopped, it wouldn't have harmed Bethesda. Zenimax, it would have due to it being their first game and could destroy them as a developer. Many have been destroyed by bad first games but Zenimax is large as a publisher and owner. If their development side was destroyed by a flop, they wouldn't go under and probably just have Bethesda do ESO mark 2. But ESO is a success and still going strong. It's Free to play(apart from the intial cost) and optional microtransactions seem to support it.

ZOS =/= ZeniMax. It's just another studio owned by the same company, specialising in MMOs.

They are taking their time, but they generally always do. This isn't because they're taking their time, it's because they're working on other projects and are not just going to do the same TES/Fallout/TES/Fallout cycle anymore.

Never has it been so long between releases...damn, kind of wish ESO never came out. I guess replaying Skyrim on PS4 will have to do...can't wait for that. I just hope they put Aedric Spears in the next one...those things are funny.

ESO was developed by a different studio: Zenimax Online Studios, a different branch of the parent company that owns Bethesda, not Bethesda Game Studios that makes the main series. It's not affecting the main-series games whatsoever. It's just something extra to help fill that gap.

TESVI will be taking longer then usual as Bethesda are wanting to do other things then Fallout and TES. It'll be 2020 at the earliest, i think and that's just for an announcement. Bethesda has 2 teams, one for Fallout and one for TES. Both teams are most likely working on the unnamed projects and it is likely, once both games have been released, all support has been ended, they'll focus on TESVI.

You'd wonder though. If there wasn't something filling that gap, TES6 might've been on the table.

If what I read here is reasonable...you'd wonder even if they are developed by a whole different company, why have literally have a decade between releases...that is rather crazy and a lot, even for Elder Scrolls, usually it is like 5 or so years.

Bethesda isn't like most. THey love to take their time with each entry and with advancements in tech, it could start taking longer for TES games to be developed. Better engines mean more features they can implement, more gameplay, large enviroments etc.. Bethesda Game Studios has always developed TES. It's only recently that they've allowed(which may have not been their decision due to Zenimax owning them) Zenimax the Developer to do ESO and would have been only involved in terms of lore. There's only so much one developer regardless of their size can do before getting sick of their own product. Hideo Kojima ended up getting burnt out by Metal Gear Solid and was constantly trying to escape from it. Bioware would be the best thing to compare with Bethesda. They follow the two franchise cycle and releases are varied.

Bethesda want to branch out and well, they are only known for one franchise that they created themselves. It could be a mixture of them wanting a break from TES and Fallout whilst having the freedom to do entirely new stuff.

The main thing is that they are working on a new engine (from what I hear) and that the engine might be taking longer than expected to get it to do what they want it to do. On top of that, they are creating two entirely new franchises with potentially the same depth of lore as TES and Fallout (obviously not the previously released lore, but depth of lore as in, the worlds being created have the space for that lore). This is a long process. It is likely that they have the plan for TES VI and are working on it with a small team to work on story and concept art and stuff, but that larger teams are working on the unannounced franchises.

My hunch: They want to make a completely seamless world, dungeons, cities, houses etc are all in one huge worldspace.
I can understand them want to experiment with this in smaller scale in a new franchise before going "full monty" in TES:VI

Right. But then why is it counted as part of the series? I've heard that from more than one source. It seems to me that they've totally disregarded the general audience of Tamriel: people who don't play MMOs for the most part.

So...also a vote here expressing grievances over ESO. But really, we should be blaming Fallout 4. My husband and I were just discussing all of this today. It's been 5 years since Skyrim came out. Totally bogus.

This is a very good point I hadn't even thought of. And it makes sense for a company as devoted to lore and depth as Bethesda. (sorry for the DP, I got lazy)

Definitely going to be a while if this is true, they'll need consoles with a lot of power. And it would be a glorious thing.

And the plants will still probably clip through everything.

They're going to be waiting a long time if they want a console to match up to PC power. It would be interesting if they want to make a seamless full Tamriel, but my money is that if such a thing were the case the majority of their time would be spent building assets and waiting for storage solutions to become available capable of storing assets for a very large world, which would be quite costly in a number of different ways if we're expecting the graphics to match up with Skyrim, not to mention that the development process would inevitably put them in a Duke Nukem Forever death spiral where they're constantly having to catch up with new innovations in graphics technology in order to stay relevant. That is assuming they don't decide to simply copy and paste assets like they did with Arena, which frankly would be the biggest letdown in role-playing game history.

I would imagine if we're expecting any major changes they're much more likely to happen in gameplay given what a revamp Skyrim turned out to be compared to Morrowind and Oblivion. In terms of technical features we can only speculate, but given what they were trying to do with the dragons in Skryim my hunch is that they're trying to do something really interesting with the monsters, and given the modular way that spells and other monster attributes have been handled in the past they probably need to make major system changes for that to work. If this turned out to be the case, it would be really interesting to see what they have in mind, like Shadow of the Colussus style wars between gods or a prequel featuring some of the really weird stuff you read about happening in the earliest days of the Empire.

Oh god I'm generating hype, aren't I? Quick, someone smack me in the head.

If anyone's still living in denial: https://twitter.com/DCDeacon/status/790032931146326016

They shouldn't wait too long, if its a fan flop in the same regards as fallout4 or skyrim they're probably gonna end up on a slippery slope. The hype generated by fans of the previous entries had a massive influence into the success that those games achieved regardless of content, a hype that has simmered down extensively after fallout 4 and Skyrim 2 I'd say. If Tes6 flops in the same regards it could set them into the end times as a company I'd wager. 20 odd years ain't a Bad run though

Such a fan flop that currently Skyrim is two of the ten top played games on Steam (special and regular edition are counted separately) (Fallout 4 is fourteenth). Or that clickbait websites post articles titled such things as "Skyrim 2 Release Date" almost every single day (if not every single one) to nibble at traffic from people looking for the next one.

It's very easy read into the perspectives of "everyone" and decide the majority of people hate it because people on websites you frequent tend to hate it.

Bethesda will release it when they are good and ready, which is their right. I don't know about you, but I've always held that ES would outlive Bethesda. If Bethesda would say "No, never again" and never make another ES game, we, the fans, would keep the series alive with our stories and mods and love. If you want the next ES game, go download a total conversion mod like Nehrim, or go play Elder Scrolls: Total War, or Elder Kings, or download Gavin Clayton's Daggerfall remake in Unity, or TESRenewal (although you'll have to apply to get into it as a modder or wait for the beta still), or whatever else you may desire. We aren't a small fandom, we've produce a lot of works in the last five years since the last major main title release. Some with nearly the same amount of effort (arguably more sometimes) as main releases. If you want something "official", you have ESO and and ESL, or Battlespire and Redguard (both being officially re-released once more quite recently).

And as a side comment, Bethesda is definitely not worried about shutting down anytime soon. Their company is privately owned, and also worth about 2.5 billion dollars. If they were worried about their financial situation, they wouldn't be waiting a decade before the next main release. And that's what I love the most about this. Bethesda isn't under pressure of deadlines (privately owned), as they set their own deadlines. I personally prefer things made with time, I don't like Call of Duty (as one of the most egregious examples) because the games are all so similar, I got tired of the copy and paste from game to game. Instead, they're taking their time to experiment with other series, to do what they want. As someone who has made a few creative works in his life, I know that nothing kills drive like being forced to constantly work on the same damned thing. And if Bethesda only went back in forth between Fallout and Elder Scrolls, we would see a true fan backlash.

As for it flopping, that's almost insane. Pete Hines would have to just not do his job at ALL for that to happen. While official numbers are hard to come by (companies are usually protective of that information), Steam Spy would suggest about 10 times more people bought Skyrim than Morrowind for the PC (note the issue with Morrowind predating Steam), and about five times as many people own Skyrim over Oblivion. I'm sure, internally, they're predicting it to push somewhere between 50 to 100 million copies (including console sales), conservatively, at about 60-100 dollars a copy. So they're looking at possibly... 10 to 3 billions dollars of gross revenue (once you work in production costs and shipping and retail, it'll obviously be less than that, and these are quick and dirty numbers because I don't have access to much better ones, and I'm not an economist major).

Bethesda has it's publisher side and that injects a fair amount of cash. They also boosted their reputation by taking Doom IV, getting it retooled into Doom and brought back a 90s icon by giving ID Software a lot of freedom. At least, I assume they did that. Dishonoured is another franchise the publisher has and I can see D2 being a hit. They are at no risk of going under between now and TES6. The Developer side is working on unnamed stuff and I don't blame them for wanting to take a break from two franchise. One of which, they've not really created from scratch and could be affecting their creativity. Look at Skyrim and Fallout 4. One was met with a lot of praise and only a small portion of the fanbase dislikes it. By that, I mean the portion that hates anything that isn't Morrowind or isn't Morrowind 2 and will go out of their way to hate other TES stuff. One has been met with mixed reception and come to think of it, most of it's DLC was crafting, which could have been their attempts at hiding a lack of motivation to do story stuff or just spread thin.

But back on TES and Bethesda, Skyrim is the best selling entry in the franchise and there was enough demand for them to release the version they created(After polishing it, porting it etc..) on the current consoles. Skyrim is more accessible then most TES titles. Though I do wish they kept the classes and attributes.

If Skyrim is considered a flop, then most of the industry is a flop. The original release broke records if I recall and the remaster is sure to bump it up by at least 5 million.

They really(and hopefully are), need to create a brand new engine at this point.

Let me just clear up here, I didn't mean that it wasn't a commercial success. The game sold sure, Still does. What I mean is that with many people who came from previous entries now not generating hype, if Bethesda or who ever takes up their role as developer decides to pander to the highest demographic they are going to end up in a self destructive path in regards of content and quality. I'm sure you're probably aware of such pages as "Subhumans of the Elderscrolls fanbase" etc on Facebook. If the fantasy they bring into light has become The Elderscrolls new selling audience then I can't imagine anything good coming from it. That is what I meant,not that it hadnt sold units. As the old saying goes "theres more to life than money" and I'd say that quality content qualifies especially from a creative industry that has proven in the past it can provide

I share your concerns, but I think Todd Howard knows what he's doing. Interference from ZeniMax aside, the TES series has never been a big fan of catering to the common expectations of video games; every entry in the series has revolutionized the fantasy RPG in some way, even when Skyrim was comparatively light on actual RPG elements. The reason why the Elder Scrolls gets imitators after every single release is that TES has always had a powerful effect on the market, and I don't see that changing any time soon, especially if they're taking a while longer for the next entry.

I mean, after Skyrim announced its release date to be 11-11-11, everyone else in the entire industry stepped out of its way. That [&@%!] doesn't happen. Certainly not when your games cater to the common demographic and fade into the white noise. That can only happen if your games are extraordinarily reliable. And keep in mind, TES wasn't even mainstream before the release of Skyrim.