When Starfield launches for PC and Xbox Series S/X next year, it will be the first brand new Bethesda IP in more that 25 years. But doing it wasn't always obvious as games like these take a lot of time developing, and it meant putting The Elder Scrolls VI on hold.
The development started after Fallout 4 was released in 2015, which means it is already six years in the making and will be seven when it launches in 2022. In an interview with IGN, the director Todd Howard explains why they finally decided to do something brand new:
"We felt doing something like Starfield... we'd been wanting to do something else for a long time and play in a new universe, so if not now — I'm going back in time, we started right after Fallout 4, so 2015 — if not now, when? It felt like, if we didn't do it then, the 'when' could be 'never'."
Howard also seems fairly sure Starfield will actually make the planned release on November 11 next year and says the date is "in ink, not pencil", which is reassuring after the avalanche of delays that has hit us recently.