Bethesda's Starfield 'is playable,' Elder Scrolls 6 is in 'pre-production' says Todd Howard

In an interview with Gameslice's Geoff Keighley on Monday, Todd Howard offered a little more detail on the status of Bethesda's next two major projects, Starfield and The Elder Scrolls 6. "I would say Elder Scrolls 6 is in pre-production, and Starfield is in production. It's a game we've been making for awhile," Howard said. "Starfield is playable. Elder Scrolls 6, not in that way yet."

Keighley mentioned that several years ago, Howard said the technology didn't yet exist for the next Elder Scrolls he wanted to make. Is that technology ready now? "It's getting closer," he said with a laugh. "I don't want to spoil anything yet. I think the teasers we put out are announcing the game, and ones of tone. How does the game feel? Hints at where it's set, for both Starfield and Elder Scrolls set. Even for us, though, redoing that music and putting it up there, even we get goosebumpy. We can't wait to have everybody be able to play this game. But that's us, too. We want to play it."

It sounds like that Elder Scrolls 6 teaser definitely contains some hints about the game, even if it's not fully in production yet. Howard was coy, but did say "there's some things there to pick apart, but we'll let our fans do that."

Wes Fenlon
Senior Editor

Wes has been covering games and hardware for more than 10 years, first at tech sites like The Wirecutter and Tested before joining the PC Gamer team in 2014. Wes plays a little bit of everything, but he'll always jump at the chance to cover emulation and Japanese games.


When he's not obsessively optimizing and re-optimizing a tangle of conveyor belts in Satisfactory (it's really becoming a problem), he's probably playing a 20-year-old Final Fantasy or some opaque ASCII roguelike. With a focus on writing and editing features, he seeks out personal stories and in-depth histories from the corners of PC gaming and its niche communities. 50% pizza by volume (deep dish, to be specific).