It's been long enough, and I don't care anymore: It's time to write about Elder Scrolls 6. Is it not the Holy Grail of current-gen, née next-gen consoles? Well, one of a couple Holy Grails anyway, along with (the Skyrim-inspired) Zelda Wii U and maybe Fallout or Witcher or Phantom Pain or something. The difference is, we know something about those games. Even for Fallout, we know Bethesda is working on it simply because they're being so evasive. But Elder Scrolls 6? It's so far away, it's a dream to some, a nightmare to others. But sooner or later, it will come. By 'sooner or later,' though, I mostly mean 'later.' I don't think we have any shot of an Elder Scrolls 6 release date before... 2018.
The Elder Scrolls 6 Release Date
The Fallout 4 Problem
I don't even care that the Elder Scrolls 6 release date is just a distant, distant dream... it's such a tantalizing prospect that I can't help but talk about it. But bear in mind, this puppy will indeed be a long way away. Bethesda publishes lots of games now, but the actual Bethesda development studio, which makes Fallout and Elder Scrolls games, pretty much only works on one game at a time. And there is extremely substantial circumstantial evidence that they are currently working on Fallout 4. And that they won't be done with it for a long, long time.
When it comes to predicting the Elder Scrolls 6 release date, it helps to study the last few games Bethesda came out with. The last console cycle, which ran from November 2005 (Xbox 360 launch) until November 2013 (Xbox One & PS4 launch) gave us a mere three Bethesda games: The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion in 2006, Fallout 3 in 2008, and Elder Scrolls V Skyrim in 2011. After that, Bethesda worked on DLC for Skyrim for another year. It's safe to say that they started developing Fallout IV full-time at the end of 2012; they officially moved on in April 2013.
A Long, Long Wait
What does that mean for the Elder Scrolls 6 release date? Well, Bethesda's development cycles have been getting longer. I expect we'll get Fallout 4 for holiday 2015, and that Bethesda will announce it in a special event around this December, as is their wont. That would mean it had been in development full-time for 2.5 to 3 years, which makes sense-considering they don't need to build a new engine like they did for Skyrim, but do need to adapt to next-gen hardware. At that point, they'll work on DLC for a while and start transitioning parts of the team to the next Elder Scrolls. And, depending on whether they use the same engine or not, and factoring in a 3 year development cycle, we're looking at an Elder Scrolls 6 release date in 2018, at the earliest.
Realistically, unless they farm out development, there's no way we'll get an Elder Scrolls 6 release date sooner than that. I'm not happy about it; that's a really long time. But I can't see any way around it.
At the least, that's a lot of time for me to speculate on where it will take place. I'm hoping for the home of the catlike Khajiit, the desert of Elsweyr. Now that we've seen a little bit of everything thanks to Elder Scrolls Online, where do you want the new game to take place when it finally comes out?
