As we were told would happen for months in advance, Bethesda skipped entirely over The Elder Scrolls 6 at E3. While we were all prepared for this, many were still expecting something, anything, even a tiny glimpse at way lay ahead. Why did Bethesda not bring their most anticipated title to E3, even in some small form?
There are a number of reasons. First is the obvious, and that is that Bethesda has Starfield, another major title in the works that it has been excited about bringing up whenever possible.
Starfield is an immense project with a scope of vision that is likely to blow our minds, or at least, that is what Bethesda seems to be aiming for based on the brief teaser they've released. With that said, Bethesda also omitted any mention of Starfield, but it stands to reason that we are likely only going to be getting news about that long before we get news of anything to do with Elder Scrolls.
From Bethesda's perspective, if Starfield is the focus of their work and the next big title to launch, everything to do with the The Elder Scrolls 6 is nothing but noise. They could have presented some insane, innovative gameplay with Starfield, but if even a bit of the next Elder Scrolls game were touched upon, people would likely only be talking about that for months to come. Better to banish it completely from existence for this year’s E3 rather than have it take attention away from The Elder Scrolls Online, Fallout 76, DOOM, and the slew of mobile games that unfortunately made their way to the presentation.
Another reason we likely did not see anything is based on other secrets they are being forced to keep. Microsoft announced their next generation console, at least in the early stages, but Sony did not. Given that we will not be seeing The Elder Scrolls 6 for at least a few years, we can be sure it is launching on the next generation of systems. This means that anything they would have to show us is likely not permitted in their agreements with both companies.
There is also the possibly that the game is far too early in development to resemble anything worthwhile. Assets early in production will look nothing like they will at launch, and showing off that kind of work would only bring taunts and anger from players about how bad the game is looking.
In all honestly, we were neither surprised nor saddened by the lack of news. How could we be? There were so many other games teased and unveiled that we really do have an embarrassment of riches in the upcoming years. The Elder Scrolls 6 is probably going to be astounding, so it is absolutely worth the wait.
Until then, we’ve got a whole lot of Keanu Reeves in the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077.