The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim was released over a decade ago, but its popularity has continued to hold strong even throughout 2021. With Skyrim receiving over 200 game awards during its time on the shelves, the game’s sequel has become one of the most anticipated and talked about titles of its time.
A 37-second teaser trailer from June 2018 is all Elder Scrolls fans have been able to enjoy so far, but, with 2022 looming on the horizon, Gameranx gives you every detail we know about The Elder Scrolls VI.
When Is The Elder Scrolls VI Going To Be Released?
In short, we still don’t really know.
In slightly longer, the release of the Elder Scrolls VI is still one of the most speculated and rumored titles of its day. Bethesda are hardly known for their rapid releases, but the gap between the Elder Scrolls V and VI is already looking like one of the longest delays from a major developer in recent gaming times.
What we do know is that Phil Spencer has revealed The Elder Scrolls VI won’t be released until after Fable 4 is finished, leaving a pretty bloated window of opportunity. With Bethesda also focusing on finishing up Starfield with its initial release planned for November 2022, don’t expect to see anything from the Elder Scrolls VI until 2023-2024 sometime.
What Have Bethesda Said About The Elder Scrolls VI?
As you might have expected when it comes to a game that has been this long in the making, Bethesda have been pretty tight-lipped when it comes to all things Elder Scrolls VI.
Todd Howard has however revealed that the game is something the company wants to honor the legacy of the series and the game’s predecessor, saying:
“I think that would drive me crazy to try to say, ‘Okay, this is the thing you have to top’ Then you realize, like, The Elder Scrolls 6 has got to be a ‘decade game’. How do you make a game where you go into it, like, ‘people have to play it for a decade?”
However, he also went on to say that Skyrim: “didn’t go deep enough”, meaning the team might be looking at an even longer development cycle than what Elder Scrolls fans are used to seeing from the company.
Where Will The Elder Scrolls VI Be Set?
Following the release of Skyrim in 2011, fans have been speculating where the next installment in the series might take place. Valenwood, High Rock, and Hammerfell have all been locations across the Elder Scrolls universe as potentially suitable picks, and a tweet by the official Elder Scrolls account might have just revealed the latter to be the place of choice for Bethesda.
In the tweet, Bethesda placed two candles on a map, with one candle placed on Skyrim and the other on Hammerfell, the homeland of the Redguards, and a caption that reads: ‘Transcribe the past and map the future.’
Couple this cryptic tweet with the geography from what we’ve been teased from the initial trailer of the Elder Scrolls VI, and Hammerfell looks an even safer bet.
Will The Elder Scrolls VI Be An Xbox Exclusive?
In March 2021, it was announced that ZeniMax (Bethesda’s parent company) had been acquired by Microsoft in a high-profile purchase.
This led every video game fan wondering: would Bethesda-made franchises like Fallout and The Elder Scrolls now become Xbox exclusives?
For a while, it looked unlikely, however recent murmurings seem to indicate this might well be the case for The Elder Scrolls VI. Despite Howard claiming it was “hard to imagine” not bringing the game to multiple platforms, Spencer later claimed: “What we’ll do in the long run is we don’t have intentions of just pulling all of Bethesda content out of Sony or Nintendo or otherwise. But what we want is we want that content to be either first or better or best.”
So whilst we can’t say for certain that Xbox and PC owners are free to start rubbing their hands yet, it seems likely that the game will at least be on Xbox Game Pass, meaning PlayStation and Switch owners will probably be forced to dig deeper in purchasing it.