Before I get into this, I want to clarify that this might be a bit of a reach.

Recently, people have found that Xbox has mysteriously marked some games as "handheld" and there's even a new controller leaked that looks very small and probably related to this new Xbox handheld thing.

Xbox Handheld Games Tag

Xbox handheld controller

How is this related to TES6?

Todd Howard, in his interview with Mortismal Gaming, briefly mentions something about "handhelds coming in" when talking about TES6, and the hardware it could potentially run.

Interview with a timestamp to him saying this

Okay, what does this mean for TES6?

Honestly? I don't think it really means anything that we didn't already know. Todd Howard already confirmed that they're "trying to cast a wide net" in terms of what hardware can run the game, but I guess this kind of further proves that they're trying to optimize it for handheld?

Mind you, he could have very well been talking about the Nintendo Switch in this interview and not really whatever this handheld news is.

Either way, whatever handheld device Xbox puts out, if TES6 is optimized for it, then it could probably give us some benchmarking for at minimum what can run the game? Honestly, this is all just a reach.

I want to hear what you guys think.

There's been a lot of misconception in the community as of late.

A lot of people don't know what's going on with the next Elder Scrolls title, and that's no fault of their own. Bethesda hasn't made any kind of announcement to communicate what is going on with the game, and anyone who doesn't specifically try to dig for real answers will probably just get fed lies by articles looking to make a quick buck out of TES fans.

I haven't really been able to find any proper "what's going on" post either, besides just loose information scattered around on Reddit in the comments. This post will only go over information that a lot of people already know, but for those who don't: This is for you.

For those of you who thought that TES6 hasn't even entered development yet and that they abandoned the IP, I have good news for you. For those of you who thought that TES6 has been in development since the teaser in 2018, I have bad news for you.

The Elder Scrolls 6 entered full-production around August of 2023.

Source

Officially, the game had entered pre-production all the way back in 2018. This is mentioned in Bethesda's website and even in the official announcement teaser's description.

Why did it enter development so late?

Your first thought might be that they simply were too lazy; that they wanted to keep milking Skyrim's money with creations until it was truly dead, or that ESO was simply making too much money for them to start on TES6.

Nothing really confirms this, and that's not how game studios work.

The real reason why Skyrim came out in 2011 and TES6 only began development in 2023 is because Bethesda only focuses on one large singleplayer RPG at a time. A few years after Fallout 4, Bethesda had announced a game roadmap at E3 back in 2018. The roadmap looked something like this:

1. Fallout 76
2. Starfield
3. The Elder Scrolls 6

BE3 2018

While Fallout 76 didn't take as long, Starfield was a whole different story. Matter of fact, Starfield is the exact reason as to why TES6 has taken so long. Starfield took really long to develop. Unfortunately, because it plays such an important role in this, I will be going over as to why Starfield took as long as it did.

So why did Starfield have such a long development time?

Todd Howard himself admitted in an interview that Starfield took far longer than expected. (Source) He briefly mentions the reasons why in that interview, but I will go over them myself in more detail.

Let's clear out the obvious one first.

• COVID-19

The global pandemic in 2020 delayed Starfield by a good chunk. It came abruptly and workflow was suddenly interrupted, which is absolutely terrible for game dev time. Not only does it literally put a halt at work, it throws everyone off.

Even though game development could be done remotely, switching your entire studio from office work to remote work is a time consuming task in itself, let alone re-organizing everything and everyone after that's over.

• Microsoft Acquisition

The other obvious reason is that Bethesda was bought by Microsoft back in 2020-2021. Looking to sell your company by itself takes time from game development because you're trying to focus on making sure your studio is appealing to the buyer.

The process of being bought is a big deal in itself. Lots of legal paperwork, getting accustomed to new management, even possible changes to the studio itself and how it functions.

And then as Todd Howard mentions, "How do we work together?" That by itself can create a whole internal mess in the middle of game development.

When you stack everything on top of one another, and especially considering that a pandemic is actively happening during this, things get really complicated.

• Creation Engine 2

This was surprising for me to find out. According to Todd Howard, keeping the engine upgrade alongside game development was a struggle.

(Source)

Every single Bethesda game has had some sort of engine upgrade before it releases. This is standard, and we never really heard about any of the struggles that can come with it until Starfield. It was a massive step-up in tech, and not a smooth one.

When you're working on new engine tech for the game, this can often rug-pull the team as they're working on the game and certain features become unavailable, which undeniably causes tons of unpredictability and slows down development majorly. This is even after Bethesda gave themselves "lots of buffer".

All of those factors combined at once heavily impact development times.

When your whole studio gets slammed heavily like that, you suddenly get a game with a slightly longer than usual development time, to a game that takes about 6-7 years of full development hell just to release, post delay.

Pair that with the fact that Starfield took as long as it did, and Bethesda only working on one major RPG at a time, and suddenly you get hit with fifteen years between mainline Elder Scrolls games, and eight years after it's announcement.

Does this mean that Bethesda has become incompetent? Is TES6 doomed before we even get the game?

That's a hard question to answer. From the interviews we got recently with Todd Howard, between IGN, Mortismal Gaming and KindaFunnyGames, every time that TES6 is brought up, there seems to be a general positivity around the game.

He mentions at the very least that the transition from Creation Engine 2 to Creation Engine 3 for TES6 went better, and did not face the same problems that Starfield did.

Why are they not talking about the game, then?

"People want information, I appreciate that. I like to think long term, about when you really see the game and hear about it. Focusing on that moment, not today, and not the time in between."

"Everybody wants to know, and we want to find a time obviously that we'll talk about that in-depth."

And this entire section in the IGN interview that would honestly take me too long to quote.

In short, they want to talk about the game properly when the time for it comes. He'd prefer that time to be as close to release as possible, which honestly, I prefer that over games getting announced years before release.

Why did Bethesda announce the game with a trailer all the way back in 2018?

As mentioned earlier, the trailer was part of the roadmap at E3 2018. All the games announced there got trailers, and Starfield at the time got a similar one too.

Now, this isn't the reason alone. Todd Howard actually admits that it was sort of done to 'signal' to the fans that they haven't abandoned the IP.

(Source)

This is partially where the infamous and the very misinterpreted 'pretend we never announced it' takes form. He regrets having announced it so early himself, too.

Okay, so, when is it releasing, then?

Tomorrow™

We don't know. Anyone you ask will give you a different answer. There's this pointing to 2026, but that's old and obviously a document can't predict the future.

If I had to give my own guess? I'd say before 2028. If I'm wrong, I'm gonna lose a bet and owe someone a copy of the game when it releases.

Do we know anything else about the game?

...Not really.

They're keeping secrecy on purpose, and they're doing an annoyingly good job at it. There haven't really been any leaks, and the only things we officially know is that,

There will be more trees in TES6 than Skyrim

It will be on Creation Engine 3

Besides that, the only other thing we really know is that, it might potentially take place in Hammerfell.

Is that it, then?

Yep! That's basically it. Albeit I'm sure there's a few details I missed here and there, but otherwise that's all there really is to TES6. Starfield took very long, but with it out of the way, all we can do now is wait for The Elder Scrolls 6 to finally release.

I hope I was able to inform a few people with this post. Naturally, with the lack of proper communication from Bethesda, it is no wonder many people get the wrong idea about what's going on and are deceived by articles. A lot of negative is born from it, and that negativity spreads across the community. I'm just trying my best to hopefully shine a positive light instead on the whole situation ♥

A small addition, please check out this reddit post that goes into detail about everything far better than I ever could in here.

Around a month ago, I posted about this painting that could be seen for a brief moment between two shots. It is from this video. You can see the three developers walk down a hallway with paintings on them from different Bethesda titles, the most obvious one being the one of Talos from Skyrim.

One of the paintings we can see here is the one shown in the post above, and even though I have tried looking at every official Bethesda game art, it is not:

1. Starfield
2. Any Elder Scrolls game
3. Any Fallout game
4. Any ESO loading screen
5. Not even Indiana Jones and the Great Circles

During my search, I had also made two posts in both r/TESVI and r/ElderScrolls (Post 1 and post 2) asking if anyone could trace the original artwork. In neither of those posts was anyone capable of actually providing the original image, further leading me to believe that this is unreleased TES6 art.

There were a few comments saying it looked like the Windows 10 lock screen, but despite the similar colors and landscape, comparing the two photos makes it very easy to tell that this is not the case.

Although, a lot of comments were also just straight up negative without contributing to the search (Primarily over at r/ElderScrolls). A lot of people think I'm crazy for this and, well, maybe I am, but it still doesn't add up that they would have this seemingly one random painting in the Bethesda Games Studio office amidst all other videogame art.

So, if I am right, and this is TES6 art, then what does this mean? Could we have found the official release date for the game? Is sailing confirmed? Are we getting Hammerfell and High Rock together?

..No, this is just a cool little find that I wanted to share with the community. After 15 years of not seeing the game, this could very well be the very first time we get to lay our eyes on some of it's official art.

What do you think?