So… it’s the perfect time to talk about the Elder Scrolls 6 release date, right? After all, Fallout 4 is out now. We’ve got hundreds of hours left to put into it before we’re done—heck, I haven’t even bought it yet, because it’s such a time commitment and I want to do it properly—and yet, I know that inquiring minds want to know… what about Elder Scrolls 6? What does the future—distant though it may be—hold for us?

The Elder Scrolls 6 Release Date: Fallout 4’s The Old Thing, Onto The New Thing

No, not really. Fallout 4 is awesome, and it’s going to be the new thing for a long, long time. But it seems like a good time to revisit what little we know about Elder Scrolls 6, the sequel to Skyrim that is almost definitely going to be Bethesda’s next proper game. Oh, you know the one—the one that won’t come out until 2019 or so, and that’s if we’re lucky.

Cool your butts on Elder Scrolls 6 release date speculation. Bethesda hasn’t said too much about the game, but the company has said that it won’t come out for a long, long time. And Bethesda only really works on one game at a time. So yea, sure—Elder Scrolls 6 development will probably start pretty soon, with new engine work (if a new engine happens) and other backend stuff happening first, and the full team moving over after Fallout 4 DLC is complete in a year or so. And then it’ll take three or four years to develop from there, maybe longer.

So that’s that. But we actually do know a couple of things about the follow-up to Skyrim. Elder Scrolls 6 is probably going to be called Redguard, based on previous trademark registration patterns exhibited by Bethesda. And with any luck it will follow the same trend as all the other mainline games, and continue the storyline further into the future… into the next stages of the rise of the Thalmor Empire and the inevitable failure of the White Gold Concordat.

But don’t put too much stock in that. Elder Scrolls 6 is a long way away. Sure, we called that Fallout 4 was in Boston way back in January 2013, so these things aren’t as unpredictable as they seem. But we won’t actually know for years. Remember, we didn’t even know that Fallout 4 was actually real until this summer. Bethesda plays its cards very close to vest.

So we shouldn’t even really be talking about this. Heck, Todd Howard probably hates this article. It’s ridiculous to be speculating about the Elder Scrolls 6 release date literally two days after Fallout 4 came out. And yet, that’s what the Internet wants. Or is it? Let’s find out.