Todd Howard says Bethesda is working to get games into players’ hands faster.
The anticipation for Bethesda’s upcoming games, especially The Elder Scrolls 6 and Fallout 5, regularly reminds us of our mortality. Not necessarily from old age – in the end, the death of interest in games also develops in many gamers. And all because Bethesda began to take an absurd amount of time to develop games.
Yes, The Elder Scrolls 6 is in active development and could release in 2026 (best case scenario), but what about Fallout 5? It hasn’t even been officially announced beyond simply confirming that it exists in Bethesda’s plans. And to make matters worse, Bethesda veteran Emil Pagliarulo recently dashed any hopes that we’d be able to play it anytime soon—a 2030 release date is a very optimistic date.
Luckily, Howard recently offered a small glimmer of hope when he told Kinda Funny Games that Bethesda is trying to speed things up.
If I didn’t make these games, I’d just play them all the time. Even this weekend I was switching between Starfield, Fallout 76 and Fallout 4 – that’s how I spent my weekend playing games. And they do take a long time, so I think one of the things we’re focused on here is making sure they’re the highest quality, but also finding ways to increase our productivity because we don’t want to wait that long either. This was never our plan, but we want to make sure we do it right.
It’s good to hear that Bethesda is acknowledging the problem of stretched development. Even though Starfield came out as a fairly decent space RPG, it clearly does not reach the level of Skyrim or even Fallout 4. At the same time, its development took about 8-9 years.
Bethesda’s desire to maintain a level of quality is understandable, and achieving this will take time. At the same time, an 8 year development cycle is simply absurd, especially when working with an already established franchise where the fundamental mechanics and expectations don’t require reinventing the wheel.