The Elder Scrolls 6 feels like it was announced an eternity ago. During E3 2018, Bethesda released a teaser trailer of some graphical landscapes (standing in for the fact that they hadn’t developed a bit of the game at all) in order to hype attendees and audiences at home for this monumental game. A big blockbuster that would be the sequel to 2011’s The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: a game that arguably defined the concept of what a fantasy role-playing game could be for a whole console generation. It was a big game and one of the most pop culturally relevant titles of the 2010s, and with the possibility of a new Elder Scrolls title on the horizon, many gamers (myself included) were jazzed at the idea that we may be able to play a sequel to Skyrim maybe within the next 2 to 3 years of its initial announcement. If anything, the teaser trailer, while minimal in every capacity, acted as a promise on Bethesda’s part that it would begin working on the game.
Sadly, This promise went unfulfilled. See, despite being announced half a decade ago, Bethesda just last week stated that The Elder Scrolls 6 was finished with pre-production and entering early development now in the Fall of 2023, i.e. five whole years after it was initially announced, and to be clear: five years is a long damn time. To put it into perspective, The Elder Scrolls 6 was announced two years before Bethesda was acquired by Microsoft, and its teaser trailer was released less than a year and a half before the beginning of the Covid 19 pandemic. As stated before, 5 years is a significant amount of time. Time that Bethesda didn’t really use to develop The Elder Scrolls 6.
And I take issue with that. After all, if a developer and/or publisher releases a teaser trailer of something (even one that’s threadbare and cobbled together), they are telling the audience: “Hey! We are working hard on this game!” They are informing the gaming populace that this project is in the process of being made.
5 years post-teaser trailer, Bethesda’s lack of progress on The Elder Scrolls 6 is unacceptable. While the Fallout developer and its defenders can trot out some arguments defending Bethesda’s inaction on the sixth Elder Scrolls title (pre-production can take a significant amount of time and Bethesda’s developmental priorities were focused on the release of Starfield), this doesn’t excuse the fact that Bethesda announced a game 5 years ago and didn’t even start active development of it during that time, making the trailer meaningless in and of itself. After all, it advertised a game that wasn’t actively being made. The teaser was hype for the sake of hype. If Blue Balls had a gaming equivalent, it would be the trailer for The Elder Scrolls 6.
Because the promise of an actual game was made, but unfortunately, that said promise still hasn’t been fully realized. The Elder Scrolls 6 has been 5 years in the not-making.
