With Fallout 4 finally giving fans of Bethesda’s massive, open-world adventures their post-apocalypse fix, it was time to start clamoring for a new entry in the studio’s other series, The Elder Scrolls. It’s been nearly seven years since The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim was released and took over the damn world, and now, at the tail end of the publisher’s E3 2018 showcase, it began the long process of teasing The Elder Scrolls VI. And this first tease, which didn’t even include a damn subtitle to give us a hint of where the game might be set, is pretty much all we’ll be getting for the foreseeable future. But there you have it. The Elder Scrolls VI, a sequel to one of the biggest crossover hits of the decade, is in development, because of course it is. And we probably won’t be able to play it for a very long time.
But wait! Bethesda’s E3 show included the announcement of two more big RPGs. The first is called The Elder Scrolls: Blades, and it’s an attempt to fit as much of the Elder Scrolls experience into a mobile game as is possible, including the series’ first-person perspective. Blades will also introduce a town-building mode. It will be released on both iOS and Android for free this fall, but it’ll also come to consoles, PCs, and virtual reality headsets in the future.
The other big surprise announcement from Bethesda Game Studios was the reveal of its next true singleplayer RPG: Starfield. It’s the developer’s first original game in nearly 25 years, and it’ll see the Skyrim studio taking its open-world approach to the heavens for a huge space adventure. Company head and beloved internet icon Todd Howard implied we can expect it to release prior to The Elder Scrolls VI, but that’s all the detail Bethesda would provide. Interestingly, Howard called it a “brand new, next-generation” game. That could mean little more than it being the next generation of Bethesda RPGs, as the studio has been clinging to its aging tech and templates for many years. Or it could actually mean that Starfield—and in turn, Elder Scrolls VI—is being built with Sony and Microsoft’s next consoles in mind. If that’s the case, then we’ve still got a long way to go before we can get a real look at what Howard and company have up their sleeves.