Bethesda’s plans for The Elder Scrolls 6 have been set in stone for well over a decade with the studio deciding on the fantasy RPG’s locale way back during the development of Fallout 4.
While The Elder Scrolls 6 is still unreleased—Todd Howard has stated that it definitely isn’t releasing before GTA 6—Bethesda has been working full-force on the game since Starfield wrapped in 2023. However, the actual plans for where the game would take place was decided way earlier when Fallout 4 started full production in 2013.
Speaking to PC Gamer, former Skyrim designer and Elder Scrolls loremaster Kurt Kuhlmann explained that Bethesda found the location to be an easy choice for the next mainline game. Unfortunately, they didn’t reveal what the location actually is, probably because that could result in a very large lawsuit.
“From when we were talking about it back in the Fallout 4 timeframe, there was a sort of consensus amongst a few people that were talking about it,” Kuhlmann said. Although, he admits that the location may have changed in the three years since he left the studio. (That seems unlikely.)
“We had an idea, but it was more of a consensus,” he said. “Like, ‘OK, where should the next game be?’ And the people that were talking all agreed. It was not an argument, it was like, ‘well, obviously it should be here’. We were more in the feel of it, in the setting; there was no story involved yet.”
The Elder Scrolls 6 was revealed at Bethesda’s E3 2018 conference alongside Starfield, teasing a single landscape image fans have been looking at for the past 7-and-a-half years. While still unconfirmed, the majority of fans believe the game will be set either in Hammerfell or High Rock, but Bethesda has still never specifically stated where the game will be set.
While Kuhlmann did have an idea of what he would do with the next mainline Elder Scrolls game, he departed Bethesda before working on the game’s active development cycle. The former RPG developer told PC Gamer that he “hasn’t been involved in that level of the story side of things since Skyrim”.
The situation surrounding The Elder Scrolls 6 hasn’t been helped by its long development time with many fans waiting almost 15 years for a sequel to Skyrim. With Starfield’s development stretched due to COVID—which also caused later releases for Oblivion Remastered and the upcoming Fallout 3 Remastered—it has taken much longer than expected to get Bethesda’s RPGs out the door.
