Bethesda has finally confirmed the release date for the Nintendo Switch 2 Edition of The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered, but it's not inspiring a huge amount of confidence based on Skyrim on Switch 2 and Oblivion Remastered everywhere else.

Bethesda Game Studios closed out the Nintendo Direct Partner Showcase earlier this year with news about its library coming to Switch 2, including the announcement of Fallout 4 Anniversary Edition and news about Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, but the big finale was that Oblivion Remastered would also be coming. And despite a Nintendo Direct no-show earlier this month, Bethesda has released a new trailer confirming the port will release on August 11, and despite word it would be a game-key card release, it will release on a proper cartridge after all.

The trailer is mostly a live-action segment showing the iconic Adoring Fan NPC from the 2006 classic following a man around, before showing a teeny-tiny bit of gameplay from the port at the end. Now, considering Skyrim's Switch 2 port was described as running "like wet ass" at launch (which, surely a wet ass would be smooth… Not important…) before getting a fix a few months later, the lack of gameplay isn't exactly inspiring confidence.

That's not to mention the fact that Skyrim is a game from 2011 with minimal improvements, whereas the remastered overhaul of Oblivion still has pretty terrible performance on PC, so how will the handheld handle it? "Will it actually work though?" one YouTube commenter asks, as another speculates: "There is a reason 80% of this video doesn't show any gameplay at all."

On top of Oblivion Remastered running poorly on other platforms, it hasn't been updated in some time, so some are hoping this new port will result in love for other versions. The YouTube comments on the trailer focus on this, with one user saying, "Please fix the performance issues on other consoles first," while another asks: "Does this mean it’ll get some patches for other consoles? I was bummed by how little post-launch support this got."

As Fallout 3 and New Vegas remake hopes and rumors persist, Bethesda's Todd Howard says he's actually "anti-remake" and prefers remasters like Oblivion's instead.

Fallout season 3 is in the works and, by the sounds of things, it's got some surprises in store.

That's according to Bethesda Game Studios head Todd Howard, who not only teased to Entertainment Weekly that season 3 "is gonna start shooting soon," but also hinted at what's to come.

"We talked about this at the end of season 2, hinting we're going to new places," Howard shared. "So one of the things that we all love about Fallout is the geography of the world and being able to show some new things in the Fallout world that I think will surprise people, that they've never seen before in the games."

During the Fallout season 2 ending, the Ghoul sets off for Colorado, while Max and Lucy are faced with the approaching Legion.

"We know The Ghoul is heading to Colorado, ideally, but in the Wasteland, thou shalt be sidetracked by bullshit every goddamn time," co-showrunner Geneva Robertson-Dworet has teased of season 3.

"He still needs to figure out exactly where he's going," she added. "Of course, Lucy and Max and many of our other characters are not necessarily heading to Colorado, so we're very excited to unveil new locations next season. In Fallout, you're always journeying and exploring and building your map out bigger, so that's what we want to be mimetic of."

There are some newcomers confirmed for season 3, too, with Breaking Bad star Aaron Paul set to join the cast, along with The Acolyte's Manny Jacinto, Paddington in Peru's Emily Mortimer, and Jojo Rabbit's Thomasin McKenzie.

Fallout season 3 doesn't yet have a release date. While you wait, check out our guide to all the upcoming TV shows worth getting excited about this year.

The announcement trailer for Pragmata was released all the way back in June 2020 and reveals a very different Diana, with Capcom then promising to release the game in 2022. As you may have heard, Capcom was a bit late. Pragmata's had a happy ending after its April 2026 launch, but as the years and delays piled up, the team couldn't shake a familiar sense of regret after revealing the game so early – or at least director Yonghee Cho couldn't.

We spoke to Cho (and producer Naoto Oyama) about the making of Pragmata, looking all the way back to that announcement trailer. It ended up being a surprisingly big deal within Capcom, not just because the date it promised loomed over the team as they worked to reinvent the game after internal mechanical reboots, but also because it got a much bigger response than Capcom ever expected for a new IP.

"When we made that initial announcement trailer, we honestly did not expect user interest to be as high as it was," Cho explains. "Of course, the dev team wanted to make a good, fun game. But when we saw the player reaction and expectations, we realized making just a good game is now no longer enough. We have to make something that's even better than we initially imagined."

Thinking of Todd Howard grimacing over The Elder Scrolls 6's eight-year-old reveal trailer, I asked Cho if he regretted that announcement in hindsight. He says there is some measure of regret, but in the end that trailer and the response it got was a boon to the team.

"It was very encouraging to see that, even after so much time had passed from the initial announcement, players were still so interested in the game," he adds. "That helped boost the spirits of the dev team."

In many ways, the early player response was "a huge element that pulled Pragmata through its development," and it certainly could've used the boost. "Ultimately, had we not released that trailer when we did, we wouldn't have the Pragmata that we have now," Cho says.

Pragmata leads love when you say it feels like a PS3 game, because that was a time when "a lot of different developers and publishers were experimenting."

As the wait for new games from Bethesda Game Studios like The Elder Scrolls 6 continues, talented fans of older RPGs like Fallout 4 are figuring out ways to, erm, make Skyrim run in them…? Yeah, you know what, that checks out.

In case you missed it – because there's a pretty big chance you have, as it's incredibly random – a Fallout 4 player known as "RPGKING" on YouTube has managed to play Skyrim in the 2015 post-apocalyptic gem after somehow getting it to run… albeit admittedly with "a few bugs definitely to work out" before releasing it as a mod to the public.

"Obviously, this won't be available" until everything is fixed, he notes in his aptly-dubbed "Beat Todd to it" video.

It's amusing to watch – I mean, how could Skyrim running on a Pip-Boy in Fallout 4 not be? The iconic "hey, you" opening scene in static-y black and white is truly a sight to behold, and even the mouse and movement controls seem to work.

It's still in rough shape for now, however, with "some lag to fix" and other issues, but RPGKING reports that "everything else works perfectly." Here's hoping it does, because I can't wait to see it up for download.

Although hilariously enough, the creator concludes his video saying he's "pretty happy with this" – only to then admit it "looks like I've got a lot of bugs to flush out still."

Regardless, fans (it's me, I'm fans) can't get enough of the chaotic idea as a whole, with folks unsurprisingly blaming the lengthy wait between Skyrim and The Elder Scrolls 6 for such Frankenstein-y mods. "This is what 15 years without a sequel does to a fanbase," one comment reads.

Another jokes, "It's a Bethesda game within a Bethesda game; I imagine bugs will be part of the experience every step of the way." My favorite reply of all, though, jests, "It's what Todd Howard would've wanted." It might just be, anon. It might just be.

Skyrim mod has you slay dragons "by debating them on the geopolitics of Tamriel," turning Bethesda's RPG into an absurd game of Civilization.

It seems like Todd Howard, executive producer and longtime developer at Bethesda, has a lot of admiration for Neil Druckmann, the head of Naughty Dog. According to a former dev from both studios, Howard was very inquisitive about Druckmann during their time at the home of The Elder Scrolls and Fallout.

Heather Cerlan, an artist who worked at Naughty Dog for a number of years before spending some time at Bethesda, speaks with Kiwi Talkz about socializing with Howard. "Me, my art director, our senior producer, and Todd, all went out to lunch after I'd been there for a week," she says.

"[Todd] actually was asking me a lot of questions about what it was like to work with Neil," she reveals. "I got the sense he either idolized Neil, or wanted to understand his process."

She says "it took her by surprise," because it "felt like he was a bit of a fanboy on Neil Druckmann, which was interesting." Indeed it is, Howard's an industry legend who's shipped several of the biggest games ever, and it's odd to think of him looking up to anyone, but then he didn't make Uncharted or The Last of Us, and if anyone will understand the kind of graft it takes for those kinds of productions to land, it's him.

Cerlan was at Bethesda from April 2018 through to April 2021, working on Starfield, following a tenure contributing to The Last of Us and a couple of Uncharted games at Naughty Dog. She muses about whether a little rivalry was going on over the Fallout and The Last of Us TV adaptations, though she's unsure where either side was up to for those while she was at Bethesda. "I think there was a little bit of competition, I don't know," she adds.

Adaptations for both properties were stop-start for much of the 2010s, probably feeding a little competitive spirit over which would get cameras rolling first. They were greenlit around the same time: The Last of Us was announced in March 2020, and Fallout the following July, but it'd take the latter an extra year to reach screens.

Either way, I hope Druckmann and Howard have since managed to have dinner together. It sounds like it's something Todd's wanted for quite some time.

The Last of Us star Troy Baker says "we've not seen the last of Joel," teases more could come from Naughty Dog "or somebody else."

It's no secret that games like Starfield and Fallout 76 stand out among past Bethesda Game Studios greats, shaking up the developer's usual formula for something new – and Todd Howard knows it, too.

The Bethesda boss himself admits as much during a recent roundtable interview. Our own Josh West posited that Starfield and Fallout 76 are more divisive than RPG gems like Skyrim, and Howard agrees to an extent – but that's not unique to them, as series like Fallout and The Elder Scrolls came across similarly different at first.

"If you look back at the beginning of Elder Scrolls, beginning of Fallout, they're a little bit the same," as Howard puts it.

"And then, you find an audience that loves that," he continues. "So, I think it's true that Fallout 76 and Starfield clearly – they're creatively different than what we had done [before]. And we really wanted to do that. When you're doing a certain type of thing for, in my case, 20 years, we want to try some other things and learn from that. We have ideas that we want to get out there."

That's more than understandable, I'd say – even as a Skyrim stan myself.

Sure, I've been waiting what feels like a century for The Elder Scrolls 6 now – but I respect that Bethesda opted to take a bit of a fresh direction with a space RPG like Starfield, even if it's not my own jam. It's got its niche now, after all.

As Howard says, "we're fortunate those games have found, in the scheme of things, giant audiences that let us keep doing things in them." Bethesda's community is all the more diverse as a result.

He concludes on games like Starfield and Fallout 76 that, "even though they're a bit off the core path of the single-player games that we have been doing, we're just fortunate to have the success that we've had with them." I'd argue that's a valid stance to take.

While I do hope Bethesda's back on its ol' Elder Scrolls grind now – which it sounds as though it is, as Howard previously admitted "the majority" of devs are on TES 6 – I get it.

It's never bad to try something new, and I'd be lying if I said I don't ever want Bethesda to give future ideas that aren't their usual Fallout or Elder Scrolls entries a go. Better than yet another Skyrim port, right?

As Starfield fans dub PS5 port "unplayable," Bethesda says it's "narrowed" the problems "down to a small number of causes" and is working to fix the RPG

The developers behind an upcoming open-world RPG called The Lantern of the Laughless Saint stop just short of throwing a white glove at Todd Howard's face in a new trailer for the game, billed as a Morrowind-inspired prologue to an even bigger RPG called The Holy Fool.

NerveLabs, whose recent oddball release Angel Engine has fared decently well on Steam, rightly argue that The Elder Scrolls 6 has taken way too long. In fact, "Elder Scrolls 6 is taking so long that we're just making our own," the devs say. Well, they also say, "Fuck you, Todd Howard." But like, in a nice way?

"Everyone's making a Soulslike," the devs observe. "We're making a Scrolls-like." To that end, NerveLabs channels Morrowind elements such as: first-person combat, killing every NPC, open-ended quests, lockpicking, and casting "spells that make you jump 5,000 feet and fucking die."

There's a winking, unserious, Powerthirst chest-beating to the whole thing – not that I'm turning my nose up at it – but what actually grabbed me about The Lantern of the Laughless Saint is the pitch for its central island.

"Somewhere in the depths is a theater with an empty stage, waiting for an audience," its Steam page explains. "As you repair or ruin the lives of the island's inhabitants, the phantoms they leave behind take their seats in the audience. The more seats you fill, the more the island listens, and the greater the applause for your final act."

There's something a bit Fable about this, even if the presentation and mechanics are straight out of Bethesda's playbook. I've always liked to see RPGs keep tabs on your collective actions and decisions and then fold them into the finale somehow, preferably more elegantly than in a binary karma system. This also sounds like an interesting application of the jester and performance theming for The Holy Fool, which stars a being cursed, almost like Jim Carrey in The Mask, with an artifact of "ancient power and cosmic madness."

The retro, '00s aesthetic looks pretty spot-on, and surprisingly, there's also full co-op support. Co-op RPGs are excruciatingly rare nowadays, so just about anything with a big world built for two players is going to get a second glance from me.

I was ready to write this off as a meme game, yet here I am cautiously, but curiously, adding The Lantern of the Laughless Saint to my Steam wishlist. NerveLabs says it's coming this year. Making not one, but two ambitious RPGs at the same time sounds like the indie dev equivalent of trying to ride two horses at the same time, but maybe it'll pan out, and maybe we will get them before The Elder Scrolls 6 after all.

There's no rush on The Elder Scrolls 6, Todd Howard says, because Bethesda has the "benefit of having so many millions of people playing our other games."

The Elder Scrolls 6 and long-time Bethesda Game Studios director Todd Howard apparently touches every part of the developer's games during production, and struggles not to, in fact, according to one former Skyrim lead.

"He's struggled throughout his entire career in this letting go process," Skyrim lead designer Bruce Nesmith said while talking about Howard's leadership style in an interview with Kiwi Talkz.

"I mean, if what I said earlier is, he had a light touch on everything and then deep dives into the things he wanted. That's a light touch literally on everything, which means that one of the issues that the studio struggled with occasionally was "'Well, we can't move forward because Todd hasn't had a chance to look at it,'" Nesmith recalled of his time at the developer.

Nesmith goes on to say that the studio obviously isn't completely blocked whenever Howard's not around "because the games got produced on time, which is not a common thing to happen in this industry" where projects are pretty frequently delayed. Bethesda would often "have it done excellently and have it done on time, but it does mean that when he leaves, they're going to feel it."

Todd Howard is so well known since he's the guy who shows up on stage or on camera every time Bethesda's about to unleash one of its big RPGs onto the world. But it's relatively normal for devs or otherwise to want to move on from a company after literal decades. Howard has suggested that The Elder Scrolls 6 might be his last game ever, though he's hinted at the future of the Fallout game series more than a few times, too.

Skyrim was "the holy s*** moment" at Bethesda, says veteran Pete Hines: "You have to be concerned about us if you think you're going to win game of the year"

A lot of changes came to Starfield as part of the Free Lanes update. Some are small, like refinements to customization and exploration, while others are far larger – such as the introduction of deep-space travel between planets in a star system. But no change is perhaps quite as profound as the one that's happened to Starfield's New Game+ progression system.

"I'm still used to saying this is a spoiler, but I don't think it is anymore," laughs Todd Howard, game director and executive producer. Let's err on the side of caution here and say for those of you who didn't finish Starfield (or are perhaps coming to the game for the very first time on PS5) you may want to turn away now. For the rest of you, let's dig into the Starfield ending.

When you complete the final Starfield story mission, One Giant Leap, you are presented with the option of going through the Unity. If you do this, your character will become Starborn and spawn into a brand new universe. You keep all of your powers, skills, level progression, and experience – and have the opportunity to become substantially more powerful through subsequent playthroughs. This comes at the cost of all of your mission progression, outposts, relationships with characters, ships, map data, and yes, all of your hard earned weapons, outfits, and items. It's a big decision to make.

"The Unity was our way of doing New Game+," says Howard. "It was us asking you this weird, deep question that I actually think got lost on a lot of people. It asks if you are just this power gamer who wants to get everything, or are you willing to leave this world behind? How do you feel about your own life choices – would you leave that all behind and start over? Some of that pain – having to give up all of your stuff, Sarah Morgan not loving you anymore, and so on – is supposed to make you feel all of that."

Tim Lamb, lead creative producer of Starfield, tells me that Bethesda knew early on that it wanted a compelling New Game Plus loop in place for this cosmic adventure. He points back to the disappointment many fans had at the conclusion of Fallout 3 being instructive here. "The game just ended. The feedback we got at the time was that fans were surprised – they wanted to keep going. So we put this system into Starfield; we wanted it to be a meaningful choice, but it wasn't meant to be suffering."

Reach for the Stars

Howard was clearly inspired by Edge of Tomorrow for the endgame progression loop Starfield launched with. "It's one of my favorite movies," he says, recalling the ending of the 2014 sci-fi film (directed by Doug Liman; starring Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt) with an almost gleeful melancholy. I'm with Howard on this one: if you're interested in an action film with an excellent time loop concept, it's well worth your time. Still, Howard says that the weight of these decisions may have been lost on players. "So we create this feeling of 'hey, you have to leave everything you did behind', but as a gamer, you're like, 'I just want to go through the magic gate and get more power.'"

Howard says the team ultimately decided, as it began thinking about what to include in the Free Lanes update, to make some alterations. "If you decide to enter the Unity now, you can do it in a way that you feel that you can still continue your character and have some of your stuff – it's stuff that you earned, after all."

Lamb reflects further on the challenge it inadvertently put on players: "The attachment that players felt to the things that they had gathered up to that point meant that they didn't want to part with their items. It was a bridge too far – a sacrifice too meaningful. There's so many exciting things that can happen in our New Game Plus loop that we wanted to give a bit of encouragement."

So in an effort to compel players into the unknown, Bethesda will now let you build a Quantum Entanglement Device. "This will allow you to take most inventory items through the Unity and into the Lodge when you arrive on the other side," says Lamb, noting that the 50 capacity device will accept most (but not all) items, letting you keep hold of your favorite weapons and suits, as well as key resources. The decision to make this change, he tells me, was spurred on by the decision to introduce more robust weapon and suit upgrade opportunities through the Free Lanes update.

"Then we are introducing X-Tech to further upgrade your weapons and your gear; well, we don't want to ask the player to put in a lot of work for a reward they are searching for, only to say, 'no, it's gone now.' So once these things started coming together, we knew we absolutely had to do something like this," he says.

Bethesda has also taken steps to better bring "Quantum Essence into the economy, to give it more power and make it more meaningful." This rare item could be accrued by defeating Starborn enemies, but didn't have all that much value beyond power regeneration. Not only will you now be able to get Quantum Essence from destroying Starborn Ships, you can also use it to upgrade Starborn powers, taking the sting out of going through the Unity and reclaiming the associated artifacts each time.

I get the sense that Howard is a little disappointed that Bethesda had to make this sort of change to Starfield, that it almost interrupts the romanticism of the story and final decision. Still, Howard is clear that making refinements to what he calls the 'elder loop' of the game (i.e. the way Starfield plays over extended durations) were essential, and will be moving forward.

"Take something like the Trackers Alliance, or other quests. You do them and then you're done. That's still rewarding, but for someone who jumps back in, they might play for a few hours – and then the update didn't serve them beyond those two or three hours. We want to be trying to do more things that update the game where it's going to change the next 100 hours," says Howard. "You can tell us if we're done our job right."

• Everything Todd Howard told us about The Elder Scrolls 6
• How Starfield inspired the next iteration of Bethesda's Creation Engine
• Todd Howard says there's "no rush" to get The Elder Scrolls 6 out

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24 years at Bethesda taught former head of publishing Pete Hines what a great game looks like and who's capable of making one. According to the now-retired executive, it's Todd Howard.

Bethesda's current director and lord of its brand-defining franchises – Howard led Skyrim in 2011, directed Fallout 4 in 2015, among other accolades to chisel on a stone tablet – is not amazing at the technical aspects of his job. Hines tells Kirk McKeand in a new installment of the journalist's Firezide Chat series matter-of-factly, "He is not the best programmer in the world. He might not be the best designer in the world. But there is nobody that is better at all of that shit than Todd, in my opinion."

"I mean, I'm biased," Hines admits, "he's one of my best friends." Regardless, he thinks Howard is a natural at understanding "how all of that shit fits together and impacts each other in a way I just haven't quite seen the same anywhere else in the industry, internal or external."

And, you know, it's hard to argue with him. When it comes to making mass appeal, player-first games that lend themselves to Amazon TV adaptations – Amazon's cultural reputation makes that sound bad, but I'm stating it as a very lucrative fact – Todd Howard is the undefeated champ.

There are plenty of other studio leaders who have been important in the industry for as long as Howard, but, in comparison, Hideo Kojima makes games for a more idiosyncratic crowd. FromSoftware's Hidetaka Miyazaki puts masochists in medieval torture devices, Yoko Taro probably puts himself in medieval torture devices, and their fanbases are all a more discerning, limited crew. But Howard lets anyone make anything of his fantasy realms, post-apocalyptic waste, trips to outer space, and no one else has been quite as successful at minimizing their role as an author that way.

"Look around the industry. Who else?" Hines says. There's no one.

"Go try that s*** in Red Dead Redemption 2": Nobody makes games like Bethesda, says studio veteran Pete Hines, so "put some respect" on Todd Howard and the Creation Engine team.

The flexible and reactive sandbox that Bethesda RPGs are known for delivers a "level of freedom" that "everybody else runs away from," reckons retired studio veteran Pete Hines, and a lot of that comes down to the studio's Creation Engine.

In a long interview with journalist Kirk McKeand's Firezide Chat, Hines digs deeper into an argument he's made before: nobody does it like Bethesda. Here, he focuses on how Bethesda "leans into the shit" that game developers would normally avoid due to technical or design limitations or concerns.

"Look around the industry," he says. "Who else? This is one of the things that used to frustrate me the most doing marketing and PR for Bethesda. If you're going to hold us accountable for stuff, please do it in the context of what they're doing.

"Who else out in the world allows you to just stack up one quest after another on the fly while you're going wherever you want and doing whatever you want? Go try that shit in Red Dead Redemption 2."

The comparison to Rockstar's (arguable) magnum opus is an interesting one. Bethesda games are known for some jank, something folks like Skyrim lead Bruce Nesmith have owned up to, but also for deep and dynamic systems. Red Dead Redemption 2, one of the most celebrated open-world games ever made, is higher-fidelity and more polished but also more prescriptive and selective in its experiences – fully capable of emergent gameplay, but not to the chaotic, daisy-chained degree of a Bethesda game. You spend more time doing things Rockstar's way in Red Dead compared to the freewheeling Bethesda approach in, say, Fallout 4.

Hines highlights the technical challenge involved in this type of game. "Try and stop doing that quest and do something else and see what the game does," he says. "What does the game do? It says, no fucking way. Pick one of these. We're not keeping track of all this shit at the same time.

"And it's like, hey, put some respect on the name of not just Todd [Howard] but this whole team that leans into the shit everybody else runs away from."

Hines also backs Howard's claim that "the most important thing he's ever created is not actually Oblivion or Skyrim or Fallout 4. It's the Creation Engine. It's the Creation Kit." While the engine is often criticized for producing visually dated, buggy, or increasingly familiar games, Hine suggests it is peerless in what it can do for the sandbox. And "if we don't have a tool that allows us to build and manage and organize the world like this, we're never going to do it," he says.

"We don't have one quest at a time," he says of Bethesda's games. "We got checkpoints and save points and blah blah blah. They say we don’t fucking care. Go wherever you want. Try and break the game. We created it for you to do that. And you're probably at some point going to be able to break it because there's so much chaos in here. But the game experience you get for that is something you can't find anywhere else. Nobody gives you that level of freedom."

Bethesda's latest major RPG, Starfield, has become an interesting examination of the studio's own design philosophy. At launch, some longtime fans criticized its limited encounter variety and the less-handcrafted feel of its massive solar system. After its most recent update, the Free Lanes update, some fans like that have found that Starfield now feels a bit more like your usual Bethesda RPG precisely because of changes to exploration (and some quality-of-life fixes improving pacing and general playability).

Some of that wanderlust, the feel of a world worth exploring, has been regained, and it acts almost as a multiplier for the reactive systems Hines describes. I'd argue that Bethesda games are fundamentally about doing what you want in an interesting world, so if the world becomes less interesting, so, too, does doing things in it. And more broadly, the enduring modding communities for Bethesda games like Skyrim provide convincing evidence for Hines' claims about the power of player freedom and a convincing world simulation.

Weighing up the Creation Engine, Hines puts it this way: "Whether it's Elder Scrolls or Fallout, recognizing the need for a tool that would allow you to create and organize all of that chaos and still allow all that freedom – and then giving that tool to fans and saying do whatever you want, change whatever you can, undo our stuff or add your own stuff, we don't care. That's really powerful. It created a different community around Bethesda Game Studios than I think you ever get if they do it another way."

Skyrim and Fallout artist says Todd Howard would tell devs "we can do anything but we can't do everything," and 95% of player-reported issues were flagged internally before launch.

These days, the vast majority of games ship with bugs that are later patched out, but Bethesda games in particular have earned themselves a somewhat dubious reputation for the sheer amount of glitches and performance issues they usually have at launch. To this day, The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim has bugs that have persisted for 15 years, and a former Bethesda artist who worked on the game has shared a design philosophy held by executive producer Todd Howard that may have contributed to that association.

In a recently resurfaced clip from a 2025 interview with Kiwi Talkz, former Bethesda senior artist Dennis Mejillones estimates 95% of the issues players report when Bethesda games launch were already flagged internally.

"We're gamers. We play the game. We play and see the same things that the gamers do," Mejillones says. "We're like, 'ah this is not fun, or as fun, or we need to do this differently."

Mejillones adds that Howard had a saying with regards to bug-fixing that he would tell developers frequently.

"Todd used to say in meetings all the time, 'we can do anything, but we can't do everything.' And that's a very true statement. It's just the reality of it."

Of course, Bethesda deserves credit for giving its games the love they deserve post-launch, with the overall reception tending to improve in the months after release thanks to updates based on player feedback. Mejillones gives Bethesda its flowers for that, citing Fallout 76's redemptive arc from launch specifically.

"Look at [Fallout] 76. Look at how far they pushed it. They could've dropped the game, they could've just let it go and whatever, but they didn't," he says. "They kept pushing it and improving it, and my understanding is that 76 is really fun now."

It's worth distinguishing post-launch performance patches from free DLC like Fallout 76's Burning Springs and Gone Fission updates. With the former, you could argue those improvements should've been implemented before release, but Mejillones is valid in giving Bethesda credit for handing players free updates with large amounts of new content. That definitely goes a long way in fostering goodwill in a community frequently let down by the janky state of Bethesda games at launch.

Skyrim and Fallout 4 artist says Bethesda's Todd Howard has too many yes men: "A lot of people were afraid to say no to Todd and that hurt him"

Bethesda's Todd Howard is no ordinary game developer. Having risen to the top of the ranks at Bethesda Game Studios over his 32-year tenure, he's a household name even among people who don't write about video games for a living.

He's been instrumental in the development of some of the most beloved games of all time, including The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, Fallout 3, and Fallout 4, and so you'd assume he's probably made some really brilliant executive decisions over the course of his long career. And yet still, he's bound to be wrong about stuff occasionally too, and according to a longtime friend and former colleague of his, everyone he works with is too afraid to tell him that.

In a recently unearthed clip from a 2025 interview with Kiwi Talkz, former Bethesda senior artist Dennis Mejillones said Howard was surrounded by too many 'yes man' when the two worked together. Mejillones worked at Bethesda from 2009 to 2021, so he spent a long time with Howard and presumably understands a lot about the innerworkings at Bethesda, at least up until five years ago.

"[Howard] is a phenomenal person, and is he perfect? No. Does he call all the shots perfectly? No," said Mejillones. "I can't tell you how many times I told Todd, like, 'hey man, that's not a good idea. That's bad. That's not good.' Or, that I kinda kept my mouth shut, like, 'oh, I don't think that's so great.' Typically though, I would communicate if I felt really strongly about it."

Of course, Mejillones doesn't have the same inside knowledge as he did when he was with Bethesda, so the communication system could've changed since he left, but when Mejillones was working with Howard, "a lot of people were afraid to say no to Todd," and Mejillones reckons "that hurt him."

This is an interesting insight even in isolation, but when presented in contrast with Skyrim co-lead designer Kurt Kuhlmann's recent assertion that Starfield's main problem was Howard being "pulled away" too often during development, a fascinating contrast emerges. On one hand, Mejillones is arguing that Howard needs to be challenged more, but on the other Kuhlmann seems to think Todd Howard games need more Todd Howard in their DNA. It should be interesting to see how that push-and-pull shakes out when The Elder Scrolls 6 launches hopefully sometime while we're all still alive.

Everything Todd Howard told us about The Elder Scrolls 6, Creation Engine 3, and the future of Bethesda RPGs: "Everyone at the studio has a responsibility to make sure our games are as good as they can be"

Bethesda boss Todd Howard has explained the studio's approach to updates when it came to creating Oblivion Remastered.

Speaking to GamesRadar+, Howard notes that remastering any of its titles is risky as "the chances of messing it up are way higher than not. So how do we do everything we can to make sure we're enhancing what Oblivion was for people who played it, and then reintroduce it." This led to the team taking a specific route when it came to the remaster, based on what the original game would look like now.

Howard explains that the approach revolved around "what are the modern things you want to do?" He recalls, "I did this thought exercise with the team. Pretend we kept patching Oblivion. What would we have done if we kept supporting it? And that's where you get a good list: We probably would have added sprinting, we probably would have adjusted the skill systems – because they are kind of punishing here. And that's where we sort of ended up, like 'this is what it's going to be.'"

However, Howard is aware that any changes for such a popular game – that players have been immersed in for what is approaching 20 years – will be heavily scrutinized, even if they end up being a net positive. He adds: "We felt really, really good about that, but you never know how the audience is going to react to it. It's also why we compressed the time from announcement to release."

So if you're expecting the rumored Fallout 3 Remaster to arrive in the near future, this will give you a better idea of the kinds of things Bethesda will be looking at when updating its 2008 RPG.

As Fallout 3 and New Vegas remake hopes and rumors persist, Bethesda's Todd Howard says he's actually "anti-remake" and prefers remasters like Oblivion's instead.

One of the great joys about playing last year's Oblivion Remastered was seeing and hearing all the mid-2000s Bethesda jank and voice-over mistakes still intact. It's a glitchy, messy game at times, and that's very distinctly part of the appeal. Todd Howard agrees, and leaving in these bugs and errors was a specific decision for the remaster.

"I think there's a lot of fuzzy judgment calls," he explains during a roundtable attended by GamesRadar+. "Like, which ones are players gonna go try to do - take that one where you can stand on things – fixing that is so complicated."

There are a couple of potential candidates for what he's referring to, but the most likely is the glitch where you suddenly become significantly taller in first-person. Figuring out how and why these happen can be laborious, and for a project like a remaster, teasing out a solution might not be worth it.

"So, you know what, it's fine. I love the VO line flub," he continues. "Stuff like that? Yeah, just leave it. It's fine. It's part of the game's character."

This one's more famous: Tandilwe, in the Temple of the One, contains a double line-reading where you can hear the performer go twice. "Wait a minute, let me do that one again," they exclaim, before going back over the dialogue.

It's hilarious, and still listenable in the remaster, just as it is in the 2006 version. I'd very much be in Howard's camp on this, that's something unique to Oblivion that should be preserved. It's an eccentricity and part of the overall charm.

Bugs are more case-by-case, depending on how they impact gameplay, but a side character's lines being slightly off? An accidental treasure, for fans to discover. Honestly, we'll have to see what emerges from The Elder Scrolls 6.

Todd Howard wanted Bethesda's original RPGs to be playable before worrying about remasters: "You can play Morrowind, you can play Fallout 3."

Before executive producer Todd Howard was on board with remastering classic Bethesda Game Studios RPGs, he wanted to make sure you could all play games like Morrowind and Fallout 3 as they are already.

In an interview speaking to GamesRadar+ about the future of The Elder Scrolls and Creation Engine, Howard says that he's "warmed up on remasters" in recent years. "For a long time I was a no, no, no," he recalls. "That is a game of its age, let's just make sure it runs."

The Bethesda boss then shouts out Xbox's game preservation program, which allows hundreds of Xbox 360 and OG Xbox games to run on modern consoles, often with framerate boosts and at higher resolutions. "They did an incredible job with backwards compatibility," Howard adds. Right now you can go and play the original Oblivion, you can play Morrowind, you can play Fallout 3. It's backwards compatible, it's 4k, and like, great."

"So that to me, was like, job number one – can you play them as they were?" Though Howard says the idea of remasters "kept coming up," so the studio started with The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered. "Feeling like this also serves the Elder Scrolls audience that we hadn't had this, this is good for that audience, and having a single player game and kind of this pocket of time. But there's a million ways that that could have gone wrong," Howard says.

Still, remastering older games hasn't been a totally smooth ride for the famed developer. All the leaks surrounding Oblivion Remastered made players "a little anxious," according to Howard, since hearing about these projects unofficially meant expectations weren't quite in tune with reality.

As The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion turns 20 years old, Bethesda creative lead says the RPG is "what Bethesda games are" in the "rawest form"

Bethesda Game Studios' boss man Todd Howard is unsurprisingly not a big fan of leaks because, according to the The Elder Scrolls and Fallout lead, leakage leads to players getting "a little anxious" over what they're getting into.

The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered was definitely not the first Bethesda RPG to leak ahead of its reveal, but it is one that fans were somewhat aware of for literal years thanks to Microsoft's leaked legal documents. So, it's no wonder that when the press sat down with Todd Howard to talk about The Elder Scrolls 6 and Creation Engine 3, he was asked about game leaks.

"They never help us," he says outright. "They don't help the audience either, for all of you who are, like, hearing things leaking. You know you're getting sort of misinformation on what it is, and so the audience can get a little anxious. Like, is it a remake? I hear this, and I hear this."

Howard continues to say it was particularly an issue with Oblivion, with fans unsure on whether it would get a full-blown remake or a simple upscale rather than the handsome facelift we ended up with . "If you hear we're remastering it, the game you have in your head, everyone is gonna have a different version of what that is," he adds. "And I think it creates some anxiety for our players."

Those widespread leaks are partly what inspired Bethesda to all but shadow drop the remaster last year. Howard says the company "wanted that time from 'here's what it is' to 'you can touch it' to be zero." That way, no one gets mixed messages or is confused about where the game sits on the remake-remaster spectrum - it's already in your hands by the time the question pops up in your head.

"So that's everything around that, but it was incredibly successful. So it obviously makes us think about, are there going to be remasters in the future of our games? What would they be? How would we approach it? We're thinking about all that," he says.

There's no rush on The Elder Scrolls 6, Todd Howard says, because Bethesda has the "benefit of having so many millions of people playing our other games"

Can you believe that it's been almost a year since the gates to Cyrodiil were swung back open? The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered was undoubtedly a triumph, a carefully crafted refresh of one of the most iconic RPGs of the last two decades. It was also quite unlike anything we've ever seen from Bethesda Game Studios.

The studio's executive producer Todd Howard (who is also responsible for directing Fallout 3, Fallout 4, Oblivion, Skyrim, and Starfield) hasn't shied away from his dislike of remakes and remasters in the past. Not only that, but Oblivion Remastered was also a shadow-drop – the timeline from reveal to release was just a few minutes, rather than the few years we often have to endure with Bethesda games. Why this, and why now?

"There are projects over the history of Bethesda where we'll start stuff, and question whether it's going to be worth all of the time and investment," says Howard. "But I've warmed up to remasters. For a long time, that was a no, no, no. I'd say, 'That was a game of its age, let's just make sure it still runs.'"

"And I'll give Xbox a shoutout here: They did an incredible job with backwards compatibility [on Xbox Series X]. Right now, you can go and play Morrowind, you can go and play the original Oblivion, and you can go and play Fallout 3. They are all backwards compatible, [upscaled] to 4K, and that's great. So to me, that was always job number one: Can you play these games as they were?"

The problem, Howard says, is that the question of remasters of iconic Bethesda games kept coming up from corners of the community. It meant the studio had to start thinking: "Okay, so if we did do a remaster, what would we want to do about it?" With the original rendition of Oblivion set to explore its 20th anniversary on March 20, 2026, was that the reason this RPG was selected over all the others? Howard says there was another intention behind the drive.

"We looked at Oblivion and we started there. We felt like this served the Elder Scrolls audience. This is good for that audience of having a single-player game in this pocket of time. But there's a million ways that it could have gone wrong."

Remastering a Classic RPG

Howard is very attuned to all of the ways that Oblivion Remastered could have misfired. He speaks about bringing out the 'dartboard of outcomes' once it became a real consideration. "It's something that means a lot to me, to the studio, and to the fans – you could screw up that legacy. The chances of messing it up are way higher than not."

Reflecting on how Bethesda approached the remaster in collaboration with external studio Virtuos, Howard says that the big question was: "How do we do everything we can to make sure we're enhancing what Oblivion was for people who played it [at release], and then reintroduce it? Our approach there was twofold: One, make it look like it's new, but it's the artstyle of what it used to be – it looks like a modern game with that [original] artstyle. The other thing is that the original game is running."

With these two priorities in place, Howard says the teams then had to figure out an approach to modernization. "I did this thought exercise with the team: pretend we kept patching Oblivion, what would we have done if we kept supporting it? And that's where you get a good list," he says. "We probably would have added sprinting. We probably would have adjusted the skill systems, because they are kind of punishing [in places]. That's where we ended up. We felt really good about it, but you never know how the audience is going to react."

That concern about audience reaction helped steer Bethesda in the direction of launching the game as soon as it was done showing it off for the first time. "That's why we compressed the time from announcement to release," he says, pointing to feeling this need to manage audience expectations. "That's where the leaks don't help us. They never help us," he chuckles, "and they don't help the audience either. You're sort of getting misinformation on what it is, and so the audience can get a little anxious. 'Wait, so is it a remake? I hear this and I hear this.'"

"And this was a game in particular, with Oblivion, where if you hear we're remastering it, the game you have in your head, well, everyone is going to have a different version of what that is. I think that creates some anxiety for our players," he says. "So we wanted that time from 'here's what it is' to 'you can touch it' to be zero."

With all of this said and done, does Howard see a world in which Bethesda is prepared to release other remasters into the world? "It was incredibly successful, so it obviously makes us think: Are there going to be remasters in the future of our games? What would they be? How would we approach it? We're thinking about all that."

Related News:

• Everything Todd Howard told us about The Elder Scrolls 6
• How Starfield inspired the next iteration of Bethesda's Creation Engine
• Todd Howard says there's "no rush" to get The Elder Scrolls 6 out

Todd Howard knows fans are waiting to hear more about The Elder Scrolls 6, though part of the admittedly nice-to-have problem is that Bethesda has to balance making the new RPG while ensuring fans of other properties like Fallout and Starfield remain fed.

Remember the days when Skyrim came out less than a year after its official reveal? How about when Fallout 4's entire marketing campaign was shoved into a nice, concise six-month window? Good times, but now, Howard has explained why the gap between reveal and release has been stretched out longer for Bethesda Game Studios.

To put things into perspective, Starfield took about five years between its first trailer and its final release date, while The Elder Scrolls 6's announcement trailer dropped a full eight years ago and its release date is nowhere in sight. Speaking during a roundtable interview attended by GamesRadar+, game director Todd Howard offers a couple of reasons for the larger and larger gaps.

"I don't want to count The Elder Scrolls 6," he laughs. "Starfield was long. But other than that, they're usually pretty short." Howard attributes Starfield's protracted development to the fact that it was an original idea rather than a sequel, that most of its production occurred during a global pandemic, and that Bethesda, as a whole, changed ownership to Microsoft.

Howard also says Bethesda is in perhaps a better position than other studios because people are still playing Fallout and Skyrim en masse. "We also, again, have that benefit of having so many millions of people playing our other games that we're actually trying to figure out how to serve those other audiences while we make a new one." There's not as huge a rush to crank out The Elder Scrolls 6, then, and it means things like Starfield's big new update are possible.

In terms of how big Bethesda Game Studios has gotten, Howard says the studio hasn't seen "these big jumps" like other big-name developers out there have. "We sort of top out with partners, four or 500 people. That's kind of like our peak," he explains. "We're seeing that growth is slow for us, to be honest, compared to, I think maybe the rest of the industry, where we still want to be who we are and making a game."

That apparently means Bethesda has "longer pre-production with smaller teams" before it puts an entire studio's worth of developers on to a project. "We really want to get a good kernel of a game that we're ready to then put more people on and start moving faster," he says. "To your larger question... it's something a lot of people are struggling with. Which is really, how much time and money can you invest... just pick a game that you have in mind. The industry is in a difficult spot, where can you, you know, what's your confidence in that making any money, right? Because the expenses are high. So I think every studio's dealing with that in their own way."

"Just pretend we didn't announce it": Todd Howard knows The Elder Scrolls 6 teaser has haunted RPG fans for nearly 8 years, but its early reveal was about "informing our audience"

Anyone involved with the enduring modding scenes for games like Skyrim and Fallout knows there's unpleasant tension between free mod creators and developer Bethesda's official Creations mod marketplace. But that doesn't seem to worry Bethesda director Todd Howard, who's eager to expand what he views as a big win for everyone.

He discusses Bethesda's approach to mods with YouTuber Mortismal Gaming in a recent interview. First, Howard establishes, "We've been really fortunate that our modding audience has been with us for a really long time." Then, he declares that Bethesda's most recent iteration of its Creations paid mods marketplace is "healthy."

"I think the good news there is it's a really healthy community," Howard continues. "I think when you go into paid mods – and we've had a couple of stabs at it, with some success and some issues – we really like where we're at. [...] We're really, really happy with that program, how it's going for both free stuff, and paid stuff, and our own stuff."

Howard says, "Our issue now actually is getting that content in front of more people because we think it's so good." He wants mods to be easier to download and use, it seems, and says Bethesda's official mod channels still have "a little bit of friction in making it easier to get that stuff and play it for our audience."

But as Howard plans the future for paid mods – as well as those Bethesda-approved and Bethesda-made mods he mentions, fans predict their free mods' untimely deaths. A comment with over 700 upvotes in one Reddit thread on the subject summarizes their fears: "The modding communities that exist today for these games would not exist if they were pay walled."

"EA is basically reheating Bethesda's nachos": The Sims 4 Marketplace sparks angry fan reactions and comparisons to paid Fallout and Skyrim mods.

Bethesda Game Studios first unveiled The Elder Scrolls 6, a title that now arguably stands as one of the most hotly anticipated new games underway, back in 2018 with a short E3 teaser – but it was perhaps revealed a tad bit too early.

Nearly a decade has passed, after all, with little solid news of The Elder Scrolls 6 since the infamous trailer – if you can call it that. Bethesda boss Todd Howard is well aware of all this, though, and it seems like he wishes things had gone a bit differently.

Speaking in an interview with IGN, he jokes about the long-awaited RPG, "Just pretend we didn't announce it. Doesn't exist. No one's heard a word." Easier said than done, unfortunately.

Why did Bethesda lift the curtain on The Elder Scrolls 6 so early, then, if developers knew there wouldn't be much more to share publicly in the coming years?

"Sometimes you need to inform people, and there's business considerations and et cetera, et cetera." If Howard had it his way, however, he'd love to "compress that moment where you hear about a game to when you can play it. Those would be on top of each other if I had my way every time."

In other words, the Oblivion Remastered reveal-to-release timeline. Sometimes, fan pressure calls for a less-than-ideal timeline, though.

"If you look back at this Fallout 76, Starfield, Elder Scrolls 6 announcement, that was really about informing our audience, because when you're going to do something new, everyone's going to ask, 'What about Elder Scrolls 6? What about a single-player game?' And we did it that way, but it's not my preference."

Bethesda devs "struggle with the balance" often – they've got a lot on their plate, of course, between Fallout and Starfield and, yes, The Elder Scrolls 6. "We're working on a lot of stuff," as Howard puts it. "I think if you look at the scale of our studio, we could have 10 times the amount of people to do all this. We're doing so much, and it's just finding the right times to tell everybody about it."

I'm not too sure 2018 was the right time myself, but…

I also acknowledge that had I not seen the teaser then, I'd have spent the next, well, nearly eight years, begging for a crumb of anything from Bethesda. So, Howard's words make sense. I just hope the studio gives us something more soon.

With The Elder Scrolls 6, Todd Howard says Bethesda has "handled" the Creation Engine "better than we ever have" thanks to lessons learned from Starfield

Bethesda Game Studios is dedicating most of its attention to The Elder Scrolls 6 now, and it's come as a breath of fresh air to the developers – one that hits quite differently to Fallout and Starfield, according to Todd Howard.

The Bethesda boss himself reveals as much during a recent roundtable interview attended by GamesRadar+, explaining how Starfield affected Bethesda's appetite for other projects.

"The majority of this building is working on The Elder Scrolls 6," he admits. "It's amazing for us to come back to it. I gotta be honest, right? Being in that world after not developing in Elder Scrolls – it's so different than Starfield, so different than Fallout – it feels great for us."

Howard continues, admitting, "We feel we're in a really good place with these franchises. Obviously, we're around Fallout stuff as well, and we feel good about that. The trick is still we have three big audiences, and in some ways, three big franchises – and in a lot of ways, the franchise is the studio. Skyrim is somewhat the sequel to Fallout 3. Fallout 4 is somewhat our follow-up to Skyrim."

There is, after all, "a lot of crossover" among fans. "There's definitely people who strongly, strongly prefer one over the other, which is totally understandable," though – and I'd certainly agree, as an Elder Scrolls truther myself.

"They're very different vibes, and they're different vibes to develop," as Howard puts it. When it comes to The Elder Scrolls, for instance, "there's something very romantic" about the fantasy setting and the feeling it gives of "a world that you feel you can almost step out into."

It's not much in the way of news regarding The Elder Scrolls 6, but it's something. It's at least reassuring to learn that Bethesda has its full focus on what might just be one of the most hotly anticipated new games underway, and that the devs are feeling good about it.

Excitingly, Howard also says that, with The Elder Scrolls 6, the studio has "handled" the Creation Engine "better than we ever have" thanks to lessons learned from Starfield.

In other words, quite a lot of work is evidently going into the upcoming RPG, and Bethesda seems confident about it to boot. Here's hoping we get to see it sometime soon, though… It has been a whopping eight years since its infamous teaser at E3 in 2018, after all.

Bethesda fans are petitioning for The Elder Scrolls 6 to add a tribute to a late TES lore legend: "He helped countless gamers delve deeper into the world of Tamriel."

Bethesda Game Studios has learned quite a lot from Starfield and its iteration of the Creative Engine, apparently – and when it comes to new games like The Elder Scrolls 6, developers are applying those lessons to make for better tech… and a better RPG.

Todd Howard, the iconic Bethesda boss himself, reveals as much during a recent roundtable interview attended by GamesRadar+.

Speaking about how experience devs gathered during the production of Starfield has impacted their work on The Elder Scrolls 6, he discusses the Creation Engine in particular – because, you know, spoiler avoidance and all that. "I will say the way we approached the engine work – we've done a much better job of it this time."

He continues: "With Starfield, it was made on Creative Engine 2, which was a big change from the original engine. We have Creation Engine 3 for Elder Scrolls 6. It started with 2."

It wasn't easy upgrading the in-house tech, though – as Howard puts it, it's "an upheaval for the team trying to make stuff," akin to "just pulling the rug out" from underneath them as they juggle development. "With Starfield, we pulled the rug out."

He explains, "We were doing things in tandem with old and new." That's never simple, but Bethesda managed – and the swap from 2 to 3 for The Elder Scrolls 6 has gone even better, apparently.

"This wasn't me saying it; everyone on the team was like, 'We have to handle this engine updating and change much better so that we can be productive.' And I'm giving the team an A+ there. We have handled that better than we ever have."

He concludes that the devs are "very happy where the tech is and where it's going" – doubly so as "being able to develop while you're changing your tech is a big trick."

Howard's words line up well with what former Skyrim lead and studio veteran Bruce Nesmith has said, too – that it's "wiser" for Bethesda to use its Creation Engine for new titles like The Elder Scrolls 6, with other games serving as an example of why it's "extremely difficult" to swap.

Nesmith also previously said Bethesda can't just switch engines because its current one is "perfectly tuned" to make the studio's beloved RPGs – and, yeah, honestly, it sounds like he's right. The devs have taken the Creation Engine and spruced it up for The Elder Scrolls 6 with an entirely new version of the tech, too, as Howard details.

It's the best possible route, in my opinion, and I do hope the team applies even more lessons learned from Starfield.

Bethesda fans are petitioning for The Elder Scrolls 6 to add a tribute to a late TES lore legend: "He helped countless gamers delve deeper into the world of Tamriel."

Bethesda's Todd Howard was "really, really sorry" about Phil Spencer's departure from Xbox, but says that "everybody's really optimistic" about the future under new CEO Asha Sharma.

In a group interview with GamesRadar+, Howard said that Sharma had not yet visited Bethesda's Maryland studio, "but everybody has talked virtually." Sharma took over leadership of Xbox last month after the abrupt departure of Phil Spencer after nearly 40 years at Microsoft. Former Xbox president Sarah Bond left Microsoft at the same time.

Howard says that Spencer "is a good friend of mine" and as such he was "really, really sorry to see Phil go." In spite of his closeness with his former boss, however, he says his relationship with Sharma has started on a positive note. "Asha is great," he notes, saying that "so far [...] everybody's really optimistic" about where things at Xbox are heading under the new leadership. Of course, that leadership is not entirely new, as Howard notes the presence of long-time Xbox exec Matt Booty in his new role as chief content officer under Sharma.

As a leading figure at Xbox, Spencer would have had a solid working relationship with Howard long before Microsoft's acquisition of Bethesda parent company Zenimax Media, which was announced in 2020. Since then, Starfield is the only major new release Bethesda has put out (no, I'm not counting Oblivion Remastered), but with The Elder Scrolls 6 still lurking somewhere over the horizon, I'd guess the pair were still working closely together until Spencer's departure.

Starfield Free Lanes update: From interplanetary travel to improved customization, here's the 5 biggest changes coming to Bethesda's RPG this April.

There's a tension inside of Bethesda Game Studios. A desire to work as the studio always has: in relative seclusion until it's ready to make a big statement. "We want that moment where people find out about our stuff to be really, really special," says Todd Howard, the executive producer speaking as I tour the new Bethesda headquarters. He asks that players "don't ever take our silence" as a sign that the studio has nothing to say: "I definitely lean towards not talking about stuff before it's out."

I'm here in Rockville, Maryland because Bethesda is offering fresh insight into the Future of Starfield. There's the incoming release on PS5, as well as a new Free Lanes update and Terran Armada expansion that massively expands the underlying meta loop of Bethesda's cosmic adventure. Howard believes in this work, and is keen for players to give Starfield another chance come April 7. But it's here where we meet some of that tension, because Howard seems eager to begin teasing what's beyond this horizon.

"The majority of this building is working on The Elder Scrolls 6. It's amazing for us to come back to it, I gotta be honest."

The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim is set to celebrate its 15th anniversary in November. A new adventure in Bethesda's beloved fantasy universe has been a long time coming, for both players and creators alike. "Being in that world again, after not developing in the Elder Scrolls… it's so different than Starfield, and so different than Fallout. It feels great for us," Howard continues. "We feel like we're in a really good place with these franchises."

"If we look at our audiences, there's a lot of crossover. But, given their popularity, there's definitely people who strongly prefer one over the other – which is totally understandable. Despite some game flows that might feel the same in your hands, they're different vibes – and they're different vibes to develop," he says. "There's something very romantic about the Elder Scrolls in the fantasy world that gives you this comfort, and this verisimilitude, of a world that you feel you can almost step out into."

The Creation Engine

The Elder Scrolls 6 entered full production in 2023, following the launch of Starfield on PC and Xbox Series X. When asked whether there were any key lessons learned through the development of Starfield that are now being applied forward, Howard pauses. "I have answers," he says eventually, "I'm just trying to think of the non-spoiler ones."

Howard ultimately decides to tease out the work Bethesda is doing with its underlying engine – with the studio developing a new iteration of its proprietary Creation Engine for The Elder Scrolls 6. "I will say, the way we approached the engine work: we've done a much better job of it this time. With Starfield, it was made on Creation Engine 2, which was a big change from the original engine."

"We have Creation Engine 3 for The Elder Scrolls 6 – it started on [Creation Engine] 2. When you do an engine change, or you are updating your core tech, that is an upheaval for the team trying to make stuff," he says. Howard explains that this process, of transitioning between engines, can be exceptionally disruptive if it isn't handled appropriately.

"With Starfield, we pulled the rug out. We were doing things in tandem with old and new, and – without going into it – I think the team and our tech staff, everybody, came off of Starfield and…"

He pauses again, refocusing his thoughts. "And this wasn't me saying it. Everyone on the team was like, 'we have to handle this engine updating and change much better so that we can be productive.' I'm giving the team an A+ there. We have handled that better than we ever have. So we're very happy with where the tech is, and where it's going. Being able to develop while you're changing your tech is a big trick any developer goes through that has been iterating and doing this [type of work]."

Howard tells me that, in spite of the complexities of updating the Creation Engine for a new generation of Bethesda RPG, he never considered shifting over to something like Epic Games' Unreal Engine 5 (which was recently used to power Oblivion Remastered). "Unreal is an amazing engine, but we like being in control of our own destiny."

The evolution of Bethesda

The Elder Scrolls 6 is undoubtedly the most anticipated upcoming video game outside of Grand Theft Auto 6. And given the divisive response to Starfield, you wouldn't be wrong for thinking that Bethesda could take this as an opportunity to reevaluate how it works – scaling up its headcount to ensure it has the staff on hand to meet the moment. Howard says that this isn't the case. In fact, he notes that production for The Elder Scrolls 6 isn't all that dissimilar to previous Bethesda titles.

"If you look at our games," he continues, "there hasn't been these big jumps. The team sizes go from 40 to 60 to 80 to 100 to, depending on how you want to add it up, we sort of top out with partners to four or 500 people. That's kind of like our peak."

Howard says that working this way is core to ensuring that Bethesda is able to establish and evolve the design principles that have been in place for over 25 years. "We still want to be who we are. And when we're making a game, we have longer pre-productions with smaller teams until we're like, okay, we know what this is," he says. "So when we're making a new one, we really want to get a good kernel of a game that we're ready to then put more people on and start moving faster."

I get the impression that Bethesda is moving into the start moving faster phase of development of The Elder Scrolls 6. Given that it took the studio five years to guide Starfield from reveal to release, some of you may certainly wonder why Bethesda takes so much time to push new games out into the world. On this, Howard has two things to say. For starters: "Everyone at the studio has a responsibility to make sure our games are as good as they can be."

And in addition to that, Howard is clearly keen for The Elder Scrolls 6 to not get swept up in the narrative that Bethesda takes an age to get new games in front of players. "I don't want to count The Elder Scrolls 6," he says, laughing. While Howard didn't speak to this directly, I get the impression that Bethesda considers The Elder Scrolls 6 to be announced, rather than revealed – the short teaser trailer from 2018 a proof-of-life rather than a kickstart of the countdown to release.

Howard is quick to acknowledge that "Starfield was unique in its length of time" between announcement and reveal, citing challenges inherent to building a new IP against the backdrop of a pandemic and the studio's acquisition into the Xbox organization. "Starfield was long, but other than that, [our timelines] are usually pretty short."

"Skyrim was about a year. Fallout 4 was pretty close to that. Oblivion [Remastered] was immediate," he says, acknowledging that the decision to shadow drop the latter was made partially in an effort to let the game speak for itself rather than let expectations be set by the rumor mill. "The leaks don't help us. They never help us. They don't help the audience either."

What does all of this say about The Elder Scrolls 6, if anything? Reading between the lines, you should consider the protracted cycle that impacted Starfield to be something of an aberration – an anomaly in the way that Bethesda likes to operate. Instead, it may be better to expect the wait for The Elder Scrolls 6 to be a little longer than you may like, albeit with the knowledge that when the studio is ready to pull back the curtain, the wait to get it in your hands won't be especially long beyond.

Worth the wait

Before I let you go, I want to share one final Todd Howard anecdote. We were discussing the wave of incoming anniversaries that Bethesda Game Studios is about to celebrate, and how Howard thinks about the studio's design philosophy within that context. I believe that what he says here may give you some insight into some of the pressure he and the hundreds of other creatives working at BGS quietly feel as development (and player expectation) ramps up on The Elder Scrolls 6.

"We're very fortunate that what we do and the gaming audiences have gotten bigger and bigger," says Howard, speaking to how the industry has changed over Bethesda's 40 years, "but it hasn't necessarily changed who we are. If you were looking at other studios, supporting all of these games, they'd be four or five times the size of us. So we're very particular about how to maintain who we are – to make sure the games are really, really special."

"There's also somewhat of a natural kind of pressure. Skyrim's 15th anniversary. Oblivion's 20th. It makes you think, 'that's a long time!' And you know, on one hand, it's a blessing – you're like, 'wow, these things are still talked about.' On the other hand, you're like, 'you know what, we've got a lot of work ahead of us.' We're doing a lot of work. We have got to make sure that this stuff delivers for the fans who have been on that journey with us, right?"

Bethesda has announced some big changes coming to Starfield this April, following confirmation that the RPG is finally making its way to PS5. Players across all supported platforms will be able to access two new batches of Starfield content that make some fairly significant changes to the way the original game plays – it's not quite the fabled 'Starfield 2.0' but it's the closest thing Bethesda is willing to develop.

First up is the Free Lanes update, which lands on April 7, 2026. This is a free patch that will fundamentally alter the core play experience. It introduces interplanetary travel within systems, unlocking a cruise mode for your starship so you can move from planet to planet. There are new resources and additions to the underlying economy of the game, an increase in weapon and ship customization, and a wider focus on POI and dungeon variety while you're out exploring. There's a lot to cover in Free Lanes, so you may want to read this article where we explore the biggest incoming changes with Starfield's lead creative producer Tim Lamb.

There's more coming on April 7 besides the Free Lanes update. Bethesda has also revealed the Terran Armada expansion, a premium story-focused DLC that introduces a suite of new locations, enemies, quests, systems, and rewards. Unlike 2024's Starfield: Shattered Space expansion, which focused on a single location, Terran Armada unfolds all across the Settled Systems – where you'll need to battle robotic forces and battle through deadly deep-space incursions.

Speaking to why the Terran Armada expansion is set on such a galactic level, Bethesda's executive producer, Todd Howard, tells me that it was the perfect compliment to the system changes introduced through the Free Lanes update. "Coming into Terran Armada, we knew we needed to do something that affects the game flow on a meta level."

While the Free Lanes update is free for players across PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X come April 7, the Terran Armada DLC is a premium purchase. Bethesda has confirmed that all existing Premium Edition owners on Xbox and Steam will receive the expansion at no additional cost.

And if all this Bethesda news has gotten you excited to return to Starfield right now, well the good news is that there's some new content waiting for you. If you joined the Trackers Alliance back in 2024, letting you role-play the fantasy of becoming an interstellar bounty hunter, then you'll find that there are five new Trackers Alliance adventures to play right now. Bethesda tells me that this expands the Trackers Alliance with new targets, contracts, and rewards – and the content is available to play for free should you have purchased the original pack. If you didn't, you can access the complete Trackers Alliance content set for 700 Creations Credits.

"There's more to come for Starfield": Bethesda says the Terran Armada DLC and Free Lanes update aren't the end of the line for RPG.

Nvidia has announced DLSS 5, the next evolution of its AI-powered rendering technique, and only gone and called it "the company’s most significant breakthrough in computer graphics since the debut of real-time ray tracing."

A video showcasing DLSS 5's effects on games including Resident Evil Requiem, Starfield, Hogwarts Legacy, and EA Sports FC demonstrates the visual impact of the upgraded "real-time neural rendering model." You know those online weirdos who roleplay Instagram filters by paint rolling makeup and baby oil onto normal-looking video game characters in a misguided attempt to make them more conventionally attractive? Yeah, it's worryingly close to that.

The first shot of the video shows Resident Evil Requiem heroine Grace receiving a shotgun blast of Hollywood VFX that turn her into a completely different character and give her movements that unnerving generative AI quality. Our boy Leon, meanwhile, basically just gets a backlight to show off his hair.

Hollywood is actually called out in Nvidia's blog post trumpeting the news – the latest in a long line of examples of games industry companies fruitlessly fetishizing films.

"Bridging the divide between rendering and reality, DLSS 5 empowers game developers to deliver a new level of photoreal computer graphics previously only achieved in Hollywood visual effects," Nvidia says. "Bridging The Cinematic Gap," a subhead in the post boasts.

Starfield, whose NPCs are generally less detailed than Resident Evil Requiem's at a base, demonstrates an even more dramatic change. Some of these DLSS 5-rendered NPCs look to have come from different games, in that they clash with the rest of Starfield and their oddly shiny skin creases and cracks with telltale AI woodenness. Starfield NPCs were a little stiff, sure, but they were consistently and humanly stiff, dammit.

There's some impressive lighting tech in here, no doubt, but the overall effect is so radical, and seemingly so indifferent to original artistic intent, that the DLSS 5 reveal has stoked some negative and doubtful responses online. Many viewers and commenters across platforms have highlighted similarities to AI photo filters, with one top comment on Nvidia's own YouTube video summing it up: "This looks extremely uncanny."

A YouTube plugin revealing hidden dislikes shows that Nvidia's video currently has 2,000 dislikes to 1,400 likes. And I can already see this reaction sticking to DLSS 5 like feathers on tar: "Slopfilter."

Several game developers, however, have hopped aboard Nvidia's hype train. Bethesda chief Todd Howard writes: "Bethesda has such a rich history pushing graphics with NVIDIA, going all the way back to Morrowind, with that incredible water. When NVIDIA showed us DLSS 5 and we got it running in Starfield, it was amazing how it brought it to life. We've played it. We can't wait for all of you to do so as well."

Capcom executive producer and executive corporate officer Jun Takeuchi says "DLSS 5 represents another important step in pushing visual fidelity forward, helping players become even more immersed in the world of Resident Evil." Curiously, Capcom did not directly comment on the significant changes made to Grace in this demonstration.

Charlie Guillemot of Ubisoft's Vantage Studios says: "The way it renders lighting, materials and characters changes what we can promise to players. On Assassin’s Creed Shadows, it's letting us build the kind of worlds we've always wanted to."

Nvidia says DLSS 5 will arrive this fall, coming to such games as "AION 2, Assassin’s Creed Shadows, Black State, CINDER CITY, Delta Force, Hogwarts Legacy, Justice, NARAKA: BLADEPOINT, NTE: Neverness to Everness, Phantom Blade Zero, Resident Evil™ Requiem, Sea of Remnants, Starfield, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered, Where Winds Meet, and more."

Get ready to yassify some Oblivion NPCs, I guess.

Duncan writes: Nvidia's CEO says "we created the modern video game industry," but all its push into AI upscaling has done is destroy good game optimization.

Rumblings about an incoming Starfield update have been swirling for months now, but Bethesda Game Studios has finally lifted the lid on when to expect more news from its spacefaring RPG.

To rewind, earlier this week Starfield composer Inon Zur called director Todd Howard a visionary. "Starfield will eventually become something that will be legendary," he added, while hinting that it's only "a matter of time" before people come around to Howard's vision of the great void.

The studio behind Skyrim and Fallout then responded to the flattery on social media with a tongue in cheek message.

"We ran this by Todd and he said his only visionary power is seeing running lanes in EA College Football 26," the developer writes on Twitter. "He appreciates all the passionate feedback on Starfield and we'll have more to share next week."

Starfield is reportedly dropping onto the PS5 next month, though there's been no official word from Bethesda just yet. Todd Howard himself also confirmed new Starfield updates aimed at existing fans are in the pipeline - just don't expect anything big enough to brand the game as "Starfield 2.0".

"For expectation setting, I think it's the kind of thing where if you love Starfield, we think you're gonna love this," Howard said earlier in the year in an interview with Kinda Funny. "It's updates and things that change the game, not in an isolated way, but sort of 'meta.' Using outer space and things in ways that we haven't."

Next week's announcement should clear up whatever's happening with both the PlayStation port and the new update.

Skyrim lead thinks Starfield "would be talked about like the second coming" if a new studio made it, but "expectations were so much higher" with Bethesda

Bethesda Game Studios' first foray into space was a little hit or miss with fans, but Starfield's composer reckons it's only a matter of time before people start to understand what Todd Howard was going for.

Asked about what it was like working with Starfield and Skyrim director Todd Howard, in an interview with RPG Site, composer Inon Zur called the famed game dev one of "the most creative and invigorating human beings in the industry" because "he just doesn't stop" and "always has new ideas."

Zur later says Todd Howard is a visionary who "sees things that people will start to find out years later." On that note, Starfield. The spacefaring epic launched to a somewhat lukewarm response thanks to its limited space exploration and procedurally-generated planets that weren't exactly familiar to fans of Fallout or modern Elder Scrolls. Zur thinks "people were just not ready for it," though.

"It's a different way of looking at it, but Todd is really strong," Zur says. "He believes in his way, and it just has proven time and time again that eventually people will understand his vision. It just takes time and this is a common thing for all the big visionaries. Sometimes people really don't understand them [visionaries] correctly, but they were strong enough to stay on course, and Todd will stay on course on Starfield. Starfield will eventually become something that will be legendary. I have no doubt. It's just a matter of time."

Starfield will reportedly rocket onto PS5 next month, but what might help the game's legacy even more are the still-mysterious upcoming updates that will use "outer space travel" in new ways, according to Howard.

Zur says he can't comment on the possibility of future Starfield DLC, "however there's always things to look for in the future."

Skyrim lead thinks Starfield "would be talked about like the second coming" if a new studio made it, but "expectations were so much higher" with Bethesda

Fallout 4 has its fair share of synth detectives and food paste, but it still needed something more during its initial development period, according to lead designer Emil Pagliarulo.

Pagliarulo tells Rock Paper Shotgun in a new interview, "The game was missing something, as far as one of the overall themes." Fallout 4 takes place in a post-war, post-cannoli version of Boston, and when Pagliarulo was growing up in the city, he remembers having a vague fear of "the boogeyman," mob boss Whitey Bulger.

"I remember having a conversation with Todd Howard that there should be this overriding sense of paranoia that people have, and they don't know who to trust," Pagliarulo continues. Ultimately, developer Bethesda used anxiety to shape Fallout 4's grisly narrative about the citizens of 2287 being tricked, kidnapped, and replaced by the unjust Institute swapping humans for perfect droids.

"It's very film noir crime-ish, in a very Boston sense too," Pagliarulo comments on Fallout 4 criminal Eddie Winter, whose full head of white hair remains flawless even after hundreds of years of skin necrosis. "It's all tied together" to Whitey Bulger and his real-life Winter Hill Gang, says Pagliarulo.

But, once again, something is missing. So in Fallout 4, it was important that, "throughout all the bad stuff and paranoia, people are still trying to rebuild society," says Pagliarulo. "When you look at Fallout 3, everywhere from Rivet City to Megaton, everybody's just getting by. But in Fallout 4, people are trying to grow beyond that a little bit."

Fallout New Vegas hopes dead again as potential remake studio says loading screen tease was just "a BTS look at our company meeting": "Pardon us as we retreat back into our vault."

Starfield on PS5 is reportedly the next Xbox console-exclusive game to jump the fence and is said to touch down on PlayStation next month.

The spacefaring Bethesda Game Studios RPG first launched on PC and Xbox Series X|S in late 2023, but according to a new report from the ever-reliable Dealabs, Starfield is waving goodbye to two years of console exclusivity. The PS5 port is apparently coming on April 7, 2026.

As with the game's original release, Starfield's PS5 port will allegedly be available in two editions. The Standard Edition is said to cost €49.99 / £44.99 (about $60), while the Premium Edition looks to be €69.99 / £59.99 (or around $80).

Starfield's Premium Edition on other platforms gives players access to the base game, its Shattered Space expansion, some in-game cosmetics, a digital artbook, and its original soundtrack. There's no word on whether PS5 players are in for the same deal at the moment, but it would make sense, at the very least.

While the space epic was divisive on impact, with many complaints aimed at its fairly repetitive, procedurally-generated planets, rumors that a 'Starfield 2.0' could fix its flaws have been growing louder for months. Studio boss and game director Todd Howard recently clarified that the team is working on a big Starfield update, but "it is not Starfield 2.0."

"For expectation setting, I think it's the kind of thing where if you love Starfield, we think you're gonna love this. It's updates and things that change the game, not in an isolated way, but sort of 'meta.' Using outer space and things in ways that we haven't," Howard said in an interview with Kinda Funny.

Previous rumors suggested that whatever the big Starfield update was would perhaps remove some of the excessive loading screens and open up more free-form space travel. Howard was also quick to note that Starfield's next update wouldn't be its last, either.

Skyrim lead thinks Starfield "would be talked about like the second coming" if a new studio made it, but "expectations were so much higher" with Bethesda

Fallout 76 is something of a dark horse in the Bethesda Game Studios library, but it's come a long way since its unequivocally disastrous launch, which was plagued with game-breaking bugs and technical shortcomings alongside criticisms of its world design and lack of stuff to do and look at. Bethesda has spent seven years polishing the game and adding content, and these days it's in pretty good standing, and in fact, it's the Bethesda game Todd Howard is most proud of.

Appearing on a recent episode of the Kinda Funny show (via Idle Sloth), Howard made the case for Fallout 76 over generational and beloved releases like Skyrim, Oblivion, and Fallout 3 and 4.

"It was incredibly difficult," Howard said. "It was difficult to get it to launch, and it didn't launch great, and then it was even harder to pull it out of that, and then when it starts getting really popular again, maintain it."

Howard then shouted out "incredible" Fallout 76 community for sticking with the game for so many years despite its rough state at launch. He also suggested the game's redemption arc and staying power are the reasons he's so proud of it today, which is fair. Not many online games are able to recover from a launch as universally maligned as Fallout 76's, and although that's never been as true as it these days, it's still genuinely impressive that the game is still around and generally liked these days.

"In many respects, it's the game that we've done that I’m the most proud of," added Howard. "It's so hard to do and then maintain as a relevant game, and I think if you look across the industry, the amount of games like it that there have been or come and gone, and here's 76 still there with big numbers and doing well."

Fallout 76 is going on its eighth year, and it doesn't sound like it's slowing down any time soon. "I get to see the roadmap that's planned for the game, and it gets even better," said Howard.

Todd Howard says Elder Scrolls 6 is a return to "classic" Bethesda RPGs like Skyrim, Oblivion, and Fallout 4 after the "creative detour" the studio took with Fallout 76 and Starfield: "We do have a certain style that we like"

Fallout game designer Todd Howard says that the creators of the Prime Video Fallout streaming series wanted to visit one of the game series' most iconic locations, New Vegas, in season one, but he advised against it.

"The writers really wanted to go to New Vegas [for Season 2]," Howard tells the Kinda Funny Games podcast (around the 21-minute mark). "They actually wanted to go there in the early, early pitches of Season 1, and I said 'I would save that. That can be, that's such an iconic thing for Fallout, it's better to, let's establish the base and then we can go to New Vegas.'"

New Vegas did wind up serving as the main location of the recently wrapped Fallout season 2, even coming close to enshrining one of the game's numerous endings as the official canon ending - though the creators say that's not the intent.

"I thought they did a really good job in taking it there because it's tricky," Howard explains. "You have an iconic area, a beloved game, particularly storylines that end different ways and really strong characters. And there's like a million ways to fuck that up. So it can be a bit of a minefield, right? And I thought they did a great job. We spent a lot of time saying like, 'Let's not refute anything that happened in the games, but let's see if there's some areas that the writers really want to push forward'."

Fallout season 2 is available to stream on Prime Video. For more, check out our guide on Fallout season 2 Easter eggs and our Fallout season 2 review.

If Todd Howard won't tell us when The Elder Scrolls 6 release date is – fine, that's fine. Skyrim fans have a plan. They'll just hire a body language expert, or throw Howard into a particle accelerator.

Either way, they have to do something after Howard recently appeared on the Kinda Funny Gamescast and said the hot, hot, hotly anticipated follow-up to Skyrim (which came out in 2011) won't be out "for a while yet." So, bring in the scientists.

"Any body language experts here to analyze Todd's face when asked when TES VI would come out??" says one popular post in the parched The Elder Scrolls 6 subreddit. "What're we thinking? Was that a 'it's 9 months away' smile? A '2 years away' smile?"

"Todd Howard is rocking that 10 charisma build. No one can read him," one reply with 756 upvotes as of writing says defeatedly. Meanwhile, one astute observer says, "He is smile."

Amen to that. Therefore, "I think this all points to a trailer tomorrow and a Monday next week release date," as another reply says. Or, if that prediction doesn't come to pass, we could always go deeper into the ancient world of divination. Pour out the coffee grounds. Pull out the sheep livers.

"Can anyone here analyze Todd's molecular structure to figure out when TESVI will release?" suggests one fan.

Realistically, though Howard keeps insisting that "The Elder Scrolls 6 is the everyday thing" for Bethesda developers, the studio's track record suggests the RPG isn't coming anytime soon. Maybe 2027 at the earliest. Or, if the fourth strand of hair on the right side of Howard's head when you look at him from behind a webcam with your computer screen turned slightly to the left under the bright light of the midday sun means what I think it means… it could come out another time.

As Todd Howard distances The Elder Scrolls 6's "classic style" from Starfield and Fallout 76, it seems Bethesda has learned all the right lessons.

Although Bethesda Game Studios promised improvements to space travel in Starfield late last year, the seamless experience that fans have yearned for since the space game's 2023 launch hasn't quite made its way over yet… but hope for it isn't dead.

In fact, it's once again been sparked in many a hopeful player's heart thanks to a recent chat between Todd Howard and Kinda Funny, in which the Bethesda boss sets expectations of what fans can anticipate to see come to Starfield. "It's updates and things that change the game, not in an isolated way, but sort of 'meta,'" Howard states. "Using outer space and things in ways that we haven't." The key here is "in ways that we haven't."

A Reddit thread puts the community's hopium on display, with the poster writing, "Is Todd Howard hinting at seamless space travel here?" They include a screenshot of the quote from Kinda Funny, along with lead creative producer Tim Lamb's past assertions that "part of the team has been focused on space gameplay to make the travels there more rewarding." The fan explains that the two developers' comments point to seamless space travel.

Is Todd Howard hinting at seamless space travel here? (In image 2, Tim Lamb’s comments also about “rewarding space travel gameplay") from r/Starfield

"Taking both Tim Lamb's and Todd Howard's comments into account, I'm really struggling to see what else this could mean at this stage," they say. "There will probably be plenty of updates to various gameplay systems, but I think the major feature will be this: seamless travel between planets. No more fragmented gameplay interrupted by loading screens, we'll genuinely feel the trip from one world to another."

Comments offer a mixed bag of similarly excited folks who think it "would be nice," and others who don't see it happening anytime soon. "Although I would love this, I cannot get my hopes up just because you never know how they can interpret 'space travel,'" as one puts it. "Could be fuel economy, could be being boarded by pirates, could be seamless (like flying into a star and dying)…would be great if any of those."

Another player adds, "If I've learned anything from my time with this game and its hype, it's don't speculate at all." As an increasingly disappointed Elder Scrolls 6 hopeful myself, I'd sadly have to agree here – although seamless space travel would be cool.

Bethesda's much-rumored Starfield PS5 port is reportedly coming in 2 months, according to latest leak

The Elder Scrolls 6 is a cryptid, existing only through one vague picture like Nessie and Bigfoot before it. I'm being facetious – like Nessie, I know it does exist – but in the eight years since Bethesda revealed the game's title card at E3 2018, its identity has been shaped by Reddit guesswork and the studio's lengthy silence. But it's been spotted in the wild, as this week creative director Todd Howard shared insight into how Bethesda is approaching the upcoming RPG.

Touching on Bethesda's "certain style," Howard contextualized The Elder Scrolls 6's place within that. "I think in many ways, Fallout 76 and Starfield are a little bit of a creative detour from that classic Elder Scrolls, Fallout – Skyrim, Fallout 3, Fallout 4, Oblivion – where you're exploring a world in a certain way," he shared on the Kinda Funny Gamescast. "And as we come back to Elder Scrolls 6 that we're doing now, we're coming back to that classic style that we've missed, that we know really well."

Name-dropping Bethesda's run of RPGs between The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion and Fallout 4 is a functional shorthand for that "classic style", but only in contrast to Fallout 76 and Starfield. Dig deeper, and it becomes harder to quantify. But what does this mean for The Elder Scrolls 6?

Something borrowed

First, it's important to identify the throughlines of the games that Howard compares The Elder Scrolls 6 to. They aren't immediately obvious: Fallout 3's DNA is at times unrecognizable in Fallout 4, for example, and Skyrim iterates heavily upon Oblivion's nitty-gritty RPG systems.

Still, they all share certain commonalities. Zoom out, and you can see an increasing prioritization of depth and color over sprawl. Skyrim did away with the cookie-cutter templates used for many of Oblivion's dungeons, instead focusing on hand-crafted interiors while rewarding curiosity with self-contained quests and unique rewards like Words of Power.

Even as a die-hard Cyrodiil tourist, wandering off the beaten path in Skyrim is undeniably more rewarding. By untangling itself from the centralized 'go there, do that' quest design of Oblivion and being less reliant on level-gating for its quests, you interact with the world less as a series of interlocking game systems and more as living, breathing place. Fallout 4 took this approach a step further, with settlement-building adding an extra layer of authorship (and purpose for hoovering up junk).

But you can also see Bethesda drifting away from its worlds being narrative-driven. Fallout 4 isn't as focused on guiding the player through Massachusetts via quests – as was the case in Fallout 3, Oblivion, and Skyrim – and instead is more system-driven, encouraging more emergent discovery through the need to scavenge for building materials.

Yet while Fallout 4 had the substance to support that looser framework, Starfield experimented with it further and (in my opinion) was a little too freewheeling – a broader world to ogle at, yes, but few meaningful reasons to engage with it.

Something new

Starfield was a "creative detour" not because of its sci-fi setting, but because it strayed furthest from Bethesda's traditional story-driven curation of its worlds.

To that end, The Elder Scrolls 6 returning to the studio's "classic style" should look a lot like Skyrim: learning from Fallout 4 in particular to achieve greater depth and substance in its world, without forgoing the storytelling chops that past Elder Scrolls games so memorable.

Given the mixed reception to Starfield and Fallout 76, there's a chance that Howard's merely offering lip service to placate miffed fans. After all, there's a lot riding on The Elder Scrolls 6, which is arguably the only game as anticipated as Grand Theft Auto 6, and saying the right things is easier than doing them.

Actions certainly speak louder than words, but Bethesda has so far avoided releasing an RPG that feels derivative to its own history; instead taking more risks than most peers of its size. This makes it difficult to set expectations for The Elder Scrolls 6 – but there, within that unpredictability, lies the purest vein of Bethesda's style.

Here's a reminder of all the upcoming Bethesda games we know to be in production.

Should we eventually get re-releases of Fallout 3 and New Vegas, it appears they're far more likely to be remasters than remakes. Bethesda head Todd Howard isn't keen on top-down do-overs of a game, instead preferring to keep as much of the original vision intact as possible through remastering.

He explained his position on Kinda Funny. "I've softened on the whole remaster thing," he says. "I'm sort of anti-remake. I respect the other ones out there, but I really think the age of a game is part of what it is and its personality and what it represented when it came out."

Preceding last year's Oblivion Remastered, conversations emerged about digging through Bethesda's releases for remastering on modern hardware. Gradually, the fourth mainline Elder Scrolls emerged as "the right one," and it was approached as if the team had kept supporting it over the years.

"It was, 'I definitely want it to be a remaster, but the absolute best version of that you can imagine,'" he adds. "So it was important to us that the original game was running, so imagine you had patched that game many, many, many times for many years, what would you have done?"

Visually, the idea was, "let's just make it look modern but still in the style it was," keeping that mid-2000s Bethesda feel. "We're not going to redesign the armor to be something new in The Elder Scrolls. It's like that version of it looking the way you remember it, but up-resed," Howard states.

To be sure, Oblivion Remastered really does feel like a time capsule, warts and all. It bodes well for whatever Bethesda's doing for Fallout 3 and New Vegas, because it suggests they'll have much the same vibes as they did when we first enjoyed them.

On the subject of Fallout releases, Howard once again says there are "multiple" projects in the works. Someday we'll get more out of him, I'm sure, but today is not that day. Something Fallout-related seems nearer than The Elder Scrolls 6, at least.

This Oblivion Remastered player has spent 300 days following an Imperial Palace Guard in the RPG "until I can loot his armor" – and they've only just seen his face

Bethesda big boy Todd Howard doesn't think the AI boom is a "fad" and, as such, the studio is "not fully ignoring it." However, he says that the team is "not using it to generate anything," and that he values "handcrafted human intention."

In an interview with Kinda Funny on YouTube, Todd Howard explains his and the studio's stance on AI. "It's certainly not a fad," he says. "I think the AI answer now becomes 'ask me in six months,' right? It changes so much what you're seeing out there. For us, we're being incredibly cautious."

He goes on to explain how Bethesda is using it, and tracking its advancements for data-led tasks. "[We're] viewing it as a tool, like an analyst [to] look at the data in our games," he explains. "We can't ignore it, in terms of it's coming, it's changing. Every few months there's a new model, particularly on the tech side with code or productivity or other things.

"And I would just say we're looking at that stuff," he continues. "We're not fully ignoring it, because where it can help us get better at some big data tasks that just take us a lot of time, that we wish were done now so we can move onto the creative stuff."

However, he emphasizes that the team isn't using it for the creative side of game development, and doesn't intend to. "We're not using it to generate anything," he says. "I think there's such an element of artistic intention that is essential to what we do and others do. And if you look across [at] things outside of AI [...] go back a hundred years [to] this idea of craftsmen, I still think craftsmen, and that handcrafted human intention, is what makes things special, and that's where we want to be."

He ends his answer explaining that it is still "very, very early days" but it seems that that studio is monitoring AI's progress in the future.

Todd Howard says Elder Scrolls 6 is a return to "classic" Bethesda RPGs like Skyrim, Oblivion, and Fallout 4 after the "creative detour" the studio took with Fallout 76 and Starfield: "We do have a certain style that we like"

Last year, rumors began to circulate of behind-closed-doors meetings between Bethesda and influencers over a major, mysterious update for Starfield – a patch which was quickly dubbed "Starfield 2.0" by the community. Today, Todd Howard has confirmed both that those meetings and the update are real, but warns players who bounced off the RPG the first time around that this won't be a massive overhaul.

Speaking with Greg Miller of Kinda Funny – one of those who saw the update last year – Howard acknowledges that Bethesda has "been working on a lot of Starfield content." The studio decided not to show that content publicly because it likes to "have periods where we focus on IPs or franchises, and Fallout really obviously dominated the fall and a little bit into early this year."

But details on the update are coming "really soon," Howard says. "We're moving into a phase where we're ready to talk about Starfield, and really show that in the right way, and what's coming to the game." He says Bethesda has been "doing a lot of work that we like a lot," but is quick to tamp down on overzealous expectations.

"It is not Starfield 2.0," Howard says flat out. "You know, I've seen some of that. For expectation setting, I think it's the kind of thing where if you love Starfield, we think you're gonna love this. It's updates and things that change the game, not in an isolated way, but sort of 'meta.' Using outer space and things in ways that we haven't."

Interestingly, that matches with some of the more exciting murmurings around the update last year, which suggested that the game might break free of some of its loading screens in favor of more free-form space travel. That would be a fundamental change addressing the biggest problem that kept me from embracing Starfield, but again, Howard says we should keep our expectations in check.

"Look, if Starfield's something that didn't connect with you right away, or you bounced off it, or found it boring in places, I don't think this is gonna change that fundamentally," Howard says. But for those who loved Starfield, and Bethesda itself? "We're really happy with it. We like it a lot."

Interestingly, Howard says the team has "more Starfield stuff coming up," even beyond this update. "We've been laying that out. It's something we see continuing for a while," and that's not even counting additional community content that Bethesda plans to support. "We're going to be a part of that as well," Howard concludes.

These are the best RPGs you can play in 2026.

The Elder Scrolls 6 is a return to that "classic" Bethesda RPG style, says studio head Todd Howard.

Appearing on today's Kinda Funny Gamescast, Howard gave a surprisingly meaty, although fairly vague, update on The Elder Scrolls 6. While he admitted the game won't be out "for a while yet," he gave fans of beloved Bethesda RPGs something to chew on while they wait. Apparently, The Elder Scrolls 6 will be a return to form following the "creative detour" Bethesda took with Fallout 76 and then Starfield.

"If you look at our games, we've always evolved. We do have a certain style that we like, and our fans like, that we want to get better and better at," Howard said. "I think in many ways, Fallout 76 and Starfield are a little bit of a creative detour from that classic Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Skyrim, Fallout 3, Fallout 4, Oblivion, where you're exploring a world in a certain way. And as we come back to Elder Scrolls 6 that we're doing now, we're coming back to that classic style that we've missed, that we know really well."

Howard added that Bethesda has spent two years upgrading Creation Engine 2, which powers Starfield, to Creation Engine 3, which is where The Elder Scrolls 6 is being built, so there's a lot of technical innovation that'll "bring that detail close to the camera immediately," but ultimately, he says "we have a style of game that we really, really like" and that "people expect from us."

"There's a lot of innovation to be done there still, so that when you step into a world, you feel like you're experiencing it, really, for the first time, a game like that. We're happy with where it's headed right now," said Howard.

Although it was announced seven long years ago, we still don't know a whole lot about The Elder Scrolls 6 at all, which is remarkable when you think on it. The leading theory is that Hammerfell is the game's setting, although that's not confirmed, and there's no release date in sight. One thing we do know for sure: it'll have more trees than Skyrim, as Howard himself so generously offered recently.

The Elder Scrolls 6 setting may have been decided when Bethesda was working on Fallout 4, former Skyrim lead and "loremaster" teases: "It was more of a consensus."

Todd Howard says that players reacted very negatively to the ending of Fallout 3, and although the team tried to leave it more open-ended with the DLC, the Bethesda director only gives himself "an average grade" for the effort.

In an interview with Game Informer, Howard explains that "people hated" how Fallout 3 ended, even though other games in the genre were more open-ended at the time. "'You’re going to get this video and then the game ends'," Howard says. "And we thought, 'this is Fallout! It’s great!' People hated it! They expected, like, 'why would the game end?!' You know, 'the other games don’t end!'"

This shift from a closed-ended to an open-ended structure was just one of the changes Bethesda made to Fallout 3 with the release of its numerous DLC packs. "The one thing that we did, we ended up changing in Fallout 3," Howard says. "We were like, 'well, like the other Fallouts, it has to end'. You know, 'we’re having this type of character system, these other perks are going to work, and then when you finish it, it’s going to end.'"

The team went back to the drawing board after players' negative feedback. "And so we were like, 'well, that was our commitment to that,'" Howard says. "And we were sitting around talking about it as we got into DLC, we’re like, 'what if it didn’t end? How would we do that?'"

Despite the time thinking about how to make Fallout more open-ended, Howard only gives the team a passing grade on the result. "And so, we kind of went back to the drawing board and figured out a way, as gracefully as we could. I’ll give us an average grade on that to make the story continue," he explains.

Fallout devs wanted uber-violent deaths to feel "like an R-rated version of Warner Bros cartoons" back in the '90s: "It was supposed to be funny."

Before Fallout 3's launch in 2008, Bethesda's revival of the post-apocalyptic was criticized both by die-hard Fallout fans and portions of the mainstream gaming audience with one, unified dismissal: "Oh, it's just Oblivion with guns." 18 years later, Todd Howard says Fallout 3's similarities to Oblivion were only natural, since it was Bethesda's follow-up to the fantasy RPG.

"The Oblivion-ish-ness of Fallout 3, I think, has to do with, in many respects, it's our follow up to Oblivion," Howard muses in an interview with Game Informer. "So, it's, you know, we’re rebooting Fallout, which people haven’t seen in a while, in an all-new way. But you’re coming off Oblivion, which was hugely popular, so you’re getting an audience that you know expects both."

The first two Elder Scrolls entries offered procedurally generated worlds before Bethesda settled on the hand-crafted it's now known for. Morrowind "popularized" the open-world format that now defines Bethesda's output, and Oblivion did the same "in a different way," Howard reckons. Fallout 3, it seems, was just the next step in exploring that style of open-world RPG.

That's not to say Fallout 3 was meant to be identical to Oblivion, and that's why Bethesda took caution to make sure it bore little aesthetic resemblance to its predecessor. "We were so conscious of proving that we could do this genre switch and that Fallout would feel very different from what came before, like Oblivion, that I think that informed a lot of how Fallout 3 was a very dark, bleak, very post-apocalyptic type of world," lead artist Istvan Pely explains.

I played a lot of Fallout 3, but I never enjoyed it quite as much as I liked Oblivion, in part because Bethesda's efforts to make it feel much more dark and bleak were so effective. These are games you're meant to spend hundreds of hours in, and I found that a lot easier to do in a colorful fantasy world rather than a desaturated post-apocalypse. But, of course, that aesthetic shift is by design.

"Oblivion was very saturated and colorful and bright for the most part," Pely continues, "and we sapped out the color, we darkened it, we just added grunge, and everything that’s like… it was almost an overcorrection to say, 'Alright, we need to make a statement that we’re going to take this seriously and do Fallout justice.' I think that gave 3, specifically, a very, very hardcore visual identity. That was, I think, a surprise to a lot of folks that we could pull it off."

Bethesda's take on the series was controversial, but it's given us some of the best Fallout games.

Before he was the big Bethesda Game Studios boss, Todd Howard worked as a producer for the company – and during that time, he discovered the beauty of Fallout's post-apocalyptic wasteland … all thanks to a copy he snagged off his brother.

Yep, that's right. Todd Howard was introduced to Fallout via his sibling in 1997, as he tells Game Informer in a recent interview on the history of the series. It wasn't a Bethesda title at the time, having been developed and published by Interplay Productions, so Howard found out about it through his brother after his high praise of the RPG.

"I was at Bethesda at the time when [Fallout] came out. It's my brother who actually played it first," he recalls. "He's like, 'Have you played Fallout?' And I said, 'I haven’t had the chance yet.' He said, 'You've gotta play it.'"

That's when Howard did what any one of us would probably do to our brother: "I actually stole his disc and never gave it back to him." It's amusing, but Howard was infatuated with Fallout – a premonition of things to come for him and Bethesda, really, if you ask me. "I loved the vibe of that game," as he puts it.

"There were things that were sort of post-apocalyptic role-playing on the pen-and-paper side, to where you had Gamma World and, obviously, Wasteland, which was kind of a precursor to Fallout," Howard goes on, describing how Fallout felt like it stood apart.

"So, I've always been interested in the rules of a world, and I felt that, obviously, the way the game played, but the rules of the world and the vibe of the world, they were just brilliant and so unique."

He concludes with praise for the Vault Boy – the now-iconic face of the Fallout series – in the original game, and admits he "played it to death." I'm left wondering whether or not his brother ever asked for the copy back… and if he might now that the cat's out of the bag?

I'm sure both have plenty of Fallout discs and whatnot in their lives now that Bethesda has the IP under its belt and Howard has directed the games since Fallout 3, but still. Principle, and all that.

Bethesda knows putting Switch 2's Indiana Jones on a real cart is a flex, but it still can't help but lock Fallout 4 and Oblivion Remastered to code-in-box launches

Todd Howard likes to go back to the drawing board every time Bethesda makes a new Elder Scrolls game. That fact is laughably obvious given the long, long wait for The Elder Scrolls 6 – we're hitting Skyrim's 15th anniversary this year – but it's an important part of the studio's philosophy about revisiting its most notable franchises.

"When we go to do an Elder Scrolls game," Howard tells Game Informer in a tangent during a Fallout interview, "I do kind of like to start over, so you look back across the franchise and say, 'Okay, what's important? How do you sort of file away the age? Like, okay, what's underneath that? Why do certain game mechanics… how do they make you feel, as opposed to the actual mechanic? What are the unique things about the world?'"

Bethesda's willingness to dramatically reinvent core parts of the series is apparent if you look back at its history. Morrowind killed the procedural generation of Arena and Daggerfall in favor of a fully handcrafted world. Skyrim ditched the hardcore number crunching of its predecessors in favor of a more intuitive stat system.

And it's true of Fallout, too, which is the actual subject of Howard's statement. But instead of referring to its own games to figure out the basic core of the identity, the team looks back at the 1997 Interplay classic that started it all. "Fallout 1, like, the tone of that game and the world of it became our boilerplate in terms of whenever you go to do something new," Howard explains.

The original Fallout's grim tone carried into Bethesda's series debut on Fallout 3, and the devs wanted to explore a different space for Fallout 4. "We're coming off of Skyrim, so it's our follow up to Skyrim," Howard explains. "There was an idea of not having it as visually and tonally bleak as Fallout 3 was, and we want each game to have its own kind of identity. We do it with Elder Scrolls, we do it with Fallout. That was one of the main goals as we went out and did research and took photos of areas that had decayed or buildings that have been destroyed or other things, there's an interesting colorfulness or beauty to some of that."

Todd Howard knows there's "anxiety" about Fallout 5, admits "we do like to wait" but reassures fans "we never stopped developing Fallout."

Bethesda chief Todd Howard says he gets the "anxiety from fans" regarding the studio's dead silence on Fallout 5, which has continued even amid peak Fallout TV show hype, but maintains that work is happening and news will come.

In Game Informer's excellent oral history of Fallout, Howard joins other Bethesda veterans in evaluating the future of the series. For years, the only concrete information we've had for Fallout 5 is that it will come out after The Elder Scrolls 6 – another game with next to no details available, and no release date in sight. Not terribly comforting, you could say, but Howard is optimistic.

"Looking at {Fallout 76], we’ve never stopped developing Fallout," he says. "We’ve had a full team on it for a long time, so Fallout, as a franchise, is the one that we’re still doing the most work in, above anything. Now, the majority of our internal team is on Elder Scrolls 6. We are doing other things with Fallout that we haven’t announced. And, you know, there’ll come a time for that.

"I get the sort of anxiety from fans, like, 'What else? Feed me!'" he adds. "But, look, we’re working on stuff. And, you know, we do like to wait. And so, I think there will be a moment to talk about [the future of Fallout], and we want to make those special moments for our fans."

Longtime quest designer Emil Pagliarulo, who most recently led design work on Starfield, offers some broad goals for future Fallout games. "I would be happy with a game that is as successful as the previous Fallout games that continues to give fans what they love," he says, later specifying the type of game you don't just play for 20 or even 100 hours, but "200, 300, you know, 600 hours, because that's the kind of games we make."

He also seems to tip his hat to the long, still-growing gap in Fallout releases and how games have moved on in that time. He uses Oblivion Remastered as an example of Bethesda acknowledging the times. "People forget, in the original Oblivion, you couldn't sprint," he says. "So, of course we're going to add that in the Oblivion remaster. Things like that. The industry moved on, and so, we want to move on with it."

In his conclusion, Howard reiterates the importance of "role-playing games where you can put yourself into it and spend a lot of time," and how fans "want to revisit it in new ways." They're crumbs, folks, but with enough milk and eggs and patience, you could almost cobble them into something vaguely resembling bread, and frankly we've got to eat something while we continue the wait for Fallout 5.

Fallout 3 remaster is reportedly still happening as Bethesda aims for Oblivion Remastered-level polish, but personally I think it should aim a little higher.

The Fallout TV show made a big mushroomed-sized bang when it debuted a brand new Power Armor into the world's lore in season 2, but not only was its appearance a standout moment in the streaming series, franchise steward Todd Howard thinks it might be the coolest Power Armor variant Bethesda's ever worked on.

The New California Republic Power Armor is a pretty big deal since it's the first time we've seen the suit in Fallout canon – it hadn't yet appeared in any of the games when the episode aired – not to mention how it recontextualizes the NCR as a major player in the post-apocalypse.

Bethesda Game Studios lead and frequent Fallout game director Todd Howard recalls that the idea for a new Power Armor variant popped up in the early phases of making the show's second season, per an interview with IGN. "I sort of said, 'Hey, every game we do a new cool Power Armor. We're doing Deathclaws. What do we think about this like NCR Deathclaw-killer armor?' So we worked on that together," Howard says.

"I'd seen it in sketches, and then going to set and seeing it in person, like, this is the most badass Power Armor I think we've ever done," he adds, before saying it's "awesome" that the NCR Power Armor managed to stomp its way into Fallout 76 recently.

The video game version of the armor is slightly more divisive, however. You can only grab the NCR suit via a Fallout 76 DLC bundle that costs $30/£27 and includes mostly cosmetics, not to mention the fact that its inclusion in a prequel game doesn't really make sense considering... urm... the NCR didn't exist yet.

Fallout season 2 showrunner suggests the series is pulling a Fallout 4 when it comes to the finale's big twist

Update: Today's Nintendo Direct Partner Showcase is over, and thanks to an appearance at the end from Bethesda's very own Todd Howard, we now have confirmed release dates for both Fallout 4's Anniversary Edition and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle on Switch 2.

As previously leaked, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is set to arrive on May 12 – we now know that this is the case for both the physical and digital version. Meanwhile, Fallout 4: Anniversary Edition's physical version is still set for April 28, but anyone happy to buy it digitally will be able to dive in from February 24. So, no shadowdrop, but there's still not too long to wait.

At the time of writing, pre-orders for the physical versions of these games don't appear to be live, so it remains to be seen if either or both end up being code-in-box or Game-Key Card releases.

To round off the series of Bethesda announcements, it was also confirmed that The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered is coming to Switch 2 later this year. Skyrim already got its own Switch 2 Edition last year, so it's set to get plenty of company soon.

Original story:

The release dates for two Xbox Game Studios titles on the Nintendo Switch 2 have apparently leaked ahead of today's Nintendo Direct Partner Showcase.

Potential spoilers for the Nintendo Direct (if spoilers for adverts exist?)

One of the strongest third parties for the Nintendo Switch 2 has ironically been a former competitor: Microsoft, with Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3+4 releasing last year and South of Midnight, Fallout 4, and Indiana Jones and The Great Circle all pegged to release in 2026. So it was pretty easy to bet that Xbox Game Studios would appear in today's Nintendo Direct Partner Showcase, but we may already have found out what the company is bringing to the table.

Dealabs reporter Bilbilkun (who has leaked a ton of things accurately for years now – namely PS Plus lineups) has reported that Fallout 4 Anniversary Edition and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle are set to arrive on Switch 2 this spring – at least physically. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is set to arrive on Switch 2 on May 12, 2026, for $69.99, with it likely being a Game-Key Card release

Fallout 4 will be first to the plate, releasing on April 28, 2026, for $59.99, but the unfortunate news is that Microsoft has seemingly opted for a code-in-box release for the RPG – not even a Game-Key card. And on the same day, the already-released Skyrim Anniversary Edition will also receive a code-in-box release for Switch 2.

Given these are specified as the release dates for the physical copies, I think there's a chance Fallout 4 will follow Skyrim by having its digital release first. Perhaps we could be looking at a shadow drop for the RPG in today's direct. Only time will tell.

With over 17 million units sold, it took Nintendo Switch 2 under 7 months to overtake the Wii U's lifetime sales.

Bethesda director Todd Howard is more than open to the Fallout TV show exploring fresh locations, including a newly-teased part of the United States in the Fallout season 2 ending.

"I think it’s good to go new places, even where the games haven’t been," Howard told Den of Geek.

That new place in question is Colorado, the site of a mountainous Enclave facility and, presumably, where Cooper Howard's family is being held after the revelation that they were removed from their cryo-pods in New Vegas.

For Howard, it appears he is keen on using Fallout season 3 as a launching pad for new people, new factions, and new ways of living, with a desire to "develop that and [explore]: ‘Who are the people there? What are some new factions? What are they doing to survive?’ It’s the same approach we have with the games."

Exciting times in the Wasteland, then. Fallout-heads will be acutely aware that Colorado has cropped up before in the series, both in the non-canon Fallout: Tactics and as one of the possible areas in the original Black Isle iteration of Fallout 3, codenamed Van Buren.

While the Ghoul is traversing the Rockies as he heads towards Colorado, it appears much of next season's action will remain firmly entrenched in New Vegas. Both the New California Republic and Caesar's Legion are on the precipice of war, while the Fallout season 2 post-credits scene revealed an ace in the hole – in the form of the Brotherhood's Liberty Prime Alpha. Think the Iron Giant with nukes and you're on the right track.

For more, check out our guide to Fallout season 2 Easter eggs and our full verdict on the Prime Video series with the Fallout season 2 review.

Just when we thought Fallout season 2 was over, the post-credits scene delivered yet another surprise: the Brotherhood's most powerful weapon. However, as shocking as the reveal was, game producer Todd Howard says it was always part of the plan.

Warning: spoilers for the Fallout season 2 ending follow.

As the hit sci-fi show's sophomore season comes to an end, we are treated to the Fallout season 2, episode 8 post-credits scene, which shows the Brotherhood of Steel fighting among themselves. But then, Dane steps in and delivers an important document to Elder Cleric Quintus, which is later revealed to be blueprints for Liberty Prime Alpha – a huge robot suit that was designed to end wars.

"Giant robots," said Howard to the Hollywood Reporter. "It was always a matter of how and when, not if. We’re so excited the show’s going to tackle that one." The inclusion of Liberty Prime Alpha at this point in the series did come as a shock at first. However, it makes perfect sense as the robot was introduced in the video games Fallout 3 and Fallout 4, which Howard worked on.

In Fallout 3, Liberty Prime is a powerful robotic ally to the player character Lone Wanderer; however, it is destroyed later in the game. Then, in Fallout 4, the robot can be rebuilt with help from the player. If the player then chooses to side with the Brotherhood, they will then use Liberty Prime to attack the Institute.

The robot does a hell of a lot of damage in the games, meaning, in the series, such a weapon could harness the power to overpower Caesar's Legion, the New California Republic, and any other enemy. In short, the inclusion of Liberty Prime Alpha completely shakes up the playing field going into Fallout season 3.

Fallout seasons 1-2 are available to stream on Prime Video. For more, check out our guide on Fallout season 2 Easter eggs and our Fallout season 2 review.

Fallout creator Todd Howard and showrunner Geneva Robertson-Dworet are remaining tight-lipped on whether or not Fallout season 2 confirms which New Vegas ending is actually canon.

Warning: Major spoilers for Fallout season 2 episodes 7 and 8 and Fallout: New Vegas below!

"We talk about it a lot," Howard tells GamesRadar+. Even when we do games, we talk about, 'Hey, what existed before, and how do you remain respectful to it?' I think what we try to do is tell the story from the perspective of the people in the world, and sometimes you're gonna get conflicting accounts."

The ending of Fallout season 2, episode 7 had fans speculating two things: Did the show just confirm that the Enclave dropped the bombs... and did they confirm that 'The House Always Wins' ending of Fallout: New Vegas is canon?

There are four potential endings in New Vegas: Caesar's Legion takes over New Vegas; the New California Republic takes control; Mr. House takes control; or there's the Yes Man ending, where the player joins forces with a Securitron and becomes his own rogue leader of what's left of the luckiest city on Earth. 'The House Always Wins' ending sees House survive, albeit immortalized in a computer, and annex New Vegas – effectively dismantling every other faction.

If you haven't played your way through the franchise, then you might not know that the games never answer who dropped the first bombs, and thus ignited the end of the world as we know it. House posits that whoever created the Deathclaws is responsible for igniting the nuclear disaster known as the Great War... and in the games, the creepy beasts were created by the United States government.

The Enclave, a mysterious, powerful, and genocidal faction, is made up of former politicians and US presidents. In season 2 episode 7, Cooper hands over the cold fusion technology to the last President of the United States (played by none other than Clancy Brown). In the season 2 finale, Cooper is arrested for doing so. This all but confirms that the President is part of the Enclave, and that the Enclave used cold fusion to ignite the Great War.

Because the TV show is canon to the video game franchise, this alters things considerably... but Robertson-Dworet says she "doesn't see it that way" and that they simply aimed to "open the question up of whether they did and also introduce [the Enclave] as one of the most powerful entities in this universe."

"And oftentimes, it's intentional that things are up for interpretation, and we have our own view of things that, you know, this series is gonna go on for a while yet," Howard adds. "But I think it's good to open up those conversations, and you may get history, you may get conflicting reports on how some things went."

Fallout season 2 is streaming in full on Prime Video. For more, check out our Fallout season 2 review.