In brief: Bethesda Game Studios has a busy schedule lined up with Starfield, The Elder Scrolls VI and Fallout 5 all in the pipeline. AAA titles like these take time to get right, however, so don't expect to add the trio of games to your collection anytime soon.
In a recent interview with IGN, Todd Howard confirmed that the studio's next game will be The Elder Scrolls VI. This tidbit isn't exactly breaking news considering Bethesda first teased the game at E3 2018, but he did add that the project is already in pre-production and will be coming after Starfield.
Speaking of, Starfield was recently delayed along with Redfall into the first half of 2023 in order to give devs more time to polish the games.
Howard said Bethesda would be doing Fallout 5 after The Elder Scrolls VI. That's great news for franchise fans but there's little reason to get overly excited today.
The executive confirmed to IGN that work on Starfield started in late 2015. Assuming it ships in the first half of next year as planned, total development time will be somewhere in the seven year ballpark. Skyrim, which launched in 2011, took about five years to make from planning to finished product. Assuming similar development timelines, it could be well over a decade before Fallout 5 starts to materialize.
"They do take a while, I wish they came out faster, I really do, we're trying as hard as we can, but we want them to be as best as they can be for everybody," Howard said.
We got our first look at gameplay footage from Starfield earlier this week, and it is shaping up nicely. "Skyrim in space" is expected to be an Xbox / PC exclusive and could be the first real test to determine if Microsoft's $7.5 billion purchase of Bethesda was worth it.