Legendary game developer and Bethesda Game Studios head Todd Howard has revealed that he won’t be making The Elder Scrolls 7.
During an interview with IGN to promote Bethesda’s brilliant-looking sci-fi RPG Starfield, Howard explained that he likely won’t be at the company for the seventh game in The Elder Scrolls series.
Due to Bethesda games’ long development times, Howard claimed that the upcoming Elder Scrolls 6 will likely be his last game in the series. While we could stick around for another Fallout, he likely won’t be at the company long enough to make two more games in Tamriel.
“As we look to an Elder Scrolls 6, that is one where… I probably shouldn’t say this. But if I do the math, I’m not getting any younger,” Howard said. “How long do people play Elder Scrolls for? That may be the last one I do. I don’t know.”
At 52 years old, Howard is a veteran RPG developer that has brought The Elder Scrolls games to life since 1996’s Daggerfall, the second game in the series. Howard’s pedigree resulted in the brilliant Morrowind, the 60 million sales of Skyrim and now the amazing-looking Starfield.
Todd Howard is still the game director of The Elder Scrolls 6, which was revealed five years ago. The developer is also still expected to spearhead Fallout 5, and even perhaps be involved in Starfield’s sequel. However, with Elder Scrolls games now taking a decade to develop, the iconic game developer may not be present for its seventh incarnation.
“I want to be faster, but speed isn’t the goal,” Howard explained.
Instead, Bethesda is planning to increase the length of support for its games. Starfield, The Elder Scrolls 6 and Fallout 5 will all receive substantial post-launch support, expansions and bug fixes, and that quality is being prioritised more than speed.
“Our ability… to support Starfield… Whereas maybe in the old days, you would put it out and then you’d go on to a sequel, now we can support that game for a much longer period of time, which is what our plan is,” Howard explained.
While many gamers have been quick to criticise Todd Howard over the years, the game developer has become an icon for gaming. Howard’s work on The Elder Scrolls has pushed the RPG genre firmly into mainstream, moving The Elder Scrolls and Fallout from a struggling niché series into worldwide greats.