When talking about the Bethesda Game Studios name, two things come to mind for a large audience. The Elder Scrolls and Waiting Times. The second is closely related to the first. If the studio has made itself known through its famous franchise, it is also characterized by the long development times between the individual games. In this context, it is quite easy to understand that the idea of moving to a new IP is all the more pondered over. The wait for a sixth episode of the roleplaying game in open world was already so strong, why take the risk of novelty, one might say. But the teams wanted change. Todd Howard confirms this in a recent exchange with IGN
Are you planning the kind of delay we have between Skyrim and its sequel? I can’t say it’s good. Would I wish I could wave a magic wand and play the game we wanted to make? […] simply that way? Absolutely.
The idea wasn’t new. In fact, the teams had wanted to tackle a new project for several years.
We wanted to do something like Starfield … we’ve wanted to do something different for a long time and play in a new universe, so if it wasn’t now – I’m going back in time, we started right after Fallout 4, so in 2015 – if not now then when? We felt that the “when” might have been “never” if we hadn’t.
Starfield, for example, slipped into Bethesda’s production schedule earlier. To know if that choice was sensible, the studio will have the answer now in a little over a year, on November 11, 2022.
