In 2016, before The Elder Scrolls 6 was officially announced at E3 2018, Todd Howard confirmed that Bethesda was working on a new Elder Scrolls game (because of course they were), but warned that it was very far off: in fact, he He even suggested that the technology needed doesn't actually exist.

"You have to be careful what I say. 'I can sit here and explain the game to you, and you'll say, "Well, I'm not going to tell you how to do it."' So what we're thinking about in that game is something that takes a lot of time."

Five years later, and three years after the announcement at E3 2018, it seems things may not have changed as much as you might expect or hope. In a new interview with The Telegraph, Howard said that Bethesda is still working on the technology that "The Elder Scrolls 6" demands.

"I like to think of 'The Elder Scrolls 6' as still in the design [stage]," Howard said. But we are working on the technical checks." Can it handle what we want to do with that game, and 'The Elder Scrolls 6' will require some additional technology in Creation Engine 2."

Creation Engine 2 will be first seen in Bethesda's upcoming sci-fi RPG Starfield, but Howard again warned that Bethesda is currently focusing all its efforts on this game. Development projects are "kind of intertwined," he said, but "the bulk of our development work is on 'Starfield' right now."

Starfield is currently slated for a November 2022 release, with The Elder Scrolls 6 coming a short time after that; Bethesda's Pete Hines said in May 2020 that details of the new Elder Scrolls would be "a few years" from that date.