The Elder Scrolls 6 is 'progressing very well,' Todd Howard says: Everyone wishes it could go faster, but 'it’s a process that we want to get right'

Just a month after Bethesda creative honcho Todd Howard said The Elder Scrolls 6 "is the everyday thing" that developers at the studio are now working on, he's said it again in a chat with Game Informer. But this time, he added one very important note: It's goin' good.

"It’s progressing really well," Howard told GI. "The majority of the studio’s on [TES]6, but I’ll say this: We always overlap. So, we’re very used to overlapping development. And we have long pre-productions on things so that we feel good about them. And it’s a process. We all wish it went a little bit faster—or a lot faster—but it’s a process that we want to get right."

It's true: We all do wish that, not just for the next Elder Scrolls adventure but videogames in general. But Elder Scrolls 6 holds a special place in our hearts in that regard, because Bethesda announced it on June 10, 2018, which for the benefit of anyone without a calendar was seven goddamn years ago, and we've heard precisely zip about it since except occasional acknowledgement that yes, a new Elder Scrolls game will be released. Someday.

I mean, this is literally still all we know about it:

That's why people tend to leap at little tidbits like this. Tiny though they may be, it's something, and that's more than we've since the existence of The Elder Scrolls 6 was first confirmed. To put things in perspective, that happened at E3 (remember when that was a thing?) the year before Keanu Reeves made us all swoon with "You're breathtaking!"

But Howard wasn't the only Bethesda high-up to comment on the situation this time around. Studio designer director Emil Pagliarulo also chimed in to say "it's going," and to remind everyone that delayed is temporary, but suck is forever.

"What do fans really want? Do they want a game that comes out before it should and doesn’t meet their expectations? Or do they want the turkey that is in the oven for long enough to be delicious when it finally comes out of the oven?" Pagliarulo asked rhetorically. "That’s what I think people are going to want. So, we’re going to take our time and as long as it needs to be to be great."

Studio director Angela Browder also took a moment to crank up the hype machine: "The Elder Scrolls VI is this endless set of possibilities that is really, really exciting as a developer, but really, really exciting as someone who really likes to think about how far everything has come in our industry. It’s gonna be dope."

I certainly hope so and I'm absolutely looking forward to it, but TES6 has some hurdles to overcome. Personally, I was tired of the formula by the time of Skyrim (the first mainline Elder Scrolls game since Arena that I haven't finished), but the bigger issue is Bethesda's previous release, Starfield, a decent Elder-Scrolls-in-space style game that fell far short of expectations. That relative flop surely gave Bethesda an awful lot to think about, and may very well be playing a role in our long wait for what comes next.