The Elder Scrolls VI likely won’t be able to live up expectations from fans, according to Bethesda veteran Bruce Nesmith, who was the lead designer on The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Nesmith, who left Bethesda after Microsoft bought the company, said in an interview that it will be “almost impossible” for The Elder Scrolls VI to live up the hype.
The issue, Nesmith believes, is that Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls series is held in such a high regard thanks to a number of critical and commercial successes over the years. Bethesda’s history of making great games is a “blessing and a curse,” Nesmith told Kiwi Talkz, as reported by PC Gamer.
“Elder Scrolls 6 is undoubtedly going to be an amazing game, but it’s going to be compared to all the previous games that Bethesda made,” Nesmith said. “The fans who want to buy Elder Scrolls 6, their expectation is going to be almost impossible to meet. And marketing departments just put their heads in their hands and weep at this. Because it’s like, ‘Okay, if it isn’t perfect, it doesn’t get a 95-plus on Metacritic, we’re a failure.'”
Bethesda isn’t the only company facing this kind of champagne problem, Nesmith said, pointing to Larian Studios as an example. The company released one of the most highly regarded RPGs in a long time, Baldur’s Gate 3, and following that up with something similarly great will be a tall task, he said.
“What are the expectations going to be on that studio’s next project? Larian was not a studio that was uppermost on everybody’s mind, didn’t fall off the lips of the vast majority of people buying video games … They weren’t what everybody considered to be a top-tier publisher. Well, guess what? They are now. They’re on the map now, and that means the expectations are sky high for them,” he said.
Nesmith is known for being outspoken following his departure from Bethesda. Prior to this, he said Bethesda announced The Elder Scrolls 6 so early–back in 2018–because fans were coming with pitchforks. But announcing so early comes with its own set of issues, he said. “Those companies that start touting their games years ahead of time? Actually, they screw themselves.”
For The Elder Scrolls 6, many assumed the early announcement was in part to assure fans that the game was coming and to help recruit staff to work on the project (and the same logic could apply to the early reveal of Fallout 5). In 2023, Bethesda boss Todd Howard said he often wonders if it was the right thing to announce The Elder Scrolls 6 so early. “I have asked myself that a lot,” he said. “I don’t know. I probably would’ve announced it more casually.”
Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer said the platforms for The Elder Scrolls VI are not yet decided, in part because the game’s release is so far off.
“With Elder Scrolls VI, it’s so far out–it’s hard to understand what platforms will even be at this point,” Spencer said in 2023. “It’s the same team that’s finishing Starfield, which [came out in September 2023]. So we’re talking about a game that’s like five-plus years away.”
Microsoft is working on new Xbox hardware, and the next console generation could begin in 2028, so it’s possible that The Elder Scrolls VI shows up on whatever the next Xbox turns out to be.
The Elder Scrolls VI is in development at Bethesda Game Studios, the same team that made Starfield. That game’s first expansion, Shattered Space, launches on September 30.
