The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim co-lead designer, Kurt Kuhlmann, has revealed during an interview with FRVR that people at Bethesda expected the studio to shift focus to The Elder Scrolls VI after completing Fallout 4, rather than tackling Fallout 76 and later, Starfield.
Asked if he would have rather worked on the next entry in the fantasy-RPG series, Kuhlmann responded, “We all expected it to be directly after Fallout 4. Why wouldn’t it be? That’s what we did, and that was kind of the expectation. And then Fallout 76 came along.” He also revealed that Fallout 76 was not originally planned to involve the wider team at Bethesda Game Studios.
It wasn’t originally supposed to involve our whole studio,” Kuhlmann said. “But then, I mean, what we were supposed to be working on next—it wasn’t ever that we were about to suddenly work on TES 6, even though that’s what I think most people wanted… And then Todd was like: ‘No, we’re doing Starfield. I got that approved. It’s going to be a new IP. It’s going to be this ambitious [game]. It’s going to be the greatest space RPG ever made.’
Fallout 4 was a very successful game. And I think he had maybe the opportunity and the ability to go to the people running Zenimax and say, ‘I want to not do TES 6′. Which seems like a pretty hard sell, right? And it must have been.
Kulmann revealed during an interview back in January that the setting for The Elder Scrolls VI (which Bethesda has yet to publicly reveal) was decided back when Fallout 4 was in production, although there’s still the possibility that things could have changed following his departure from Bethesda.
The Elder Scrolls VI is currently in development at Bethesda Game Studios, with the company revealing back in July that the game is ‘the primary development‘ focus for the team. Despite this, a release date continues to remain elusive, and there isn’t any word yet if the game will come to PS5 given Microsoft’s recent decision to bring back Xbox console exclusives.
[Source – FRVR]