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Kurt Kuhlmann, a "loremaster" long known as a foundational figure for The Elder Scrolls worldbuilding, and more topically recognized as co-lead designer on Skyrim and lead systems designer for Starfield, left Bethesda in 2023 after a total of over two decades at the company. More than two years later, he's now explained that his departure was fueled by growing dissatisfaction with his role at the studio and a particular pain point regarding his role on The Elder Scrolls 6.
Speaking with PC Gamer, Kuhlmann, who makes his continued love for Bethesda quite clear throughout his comments, recalls that "there were some things that had been going on for a long time that I'd not been super happy with."
Bethesda had grown enormously since its humble basement days, and the explosive success of Skyrim only catapulted it forward. Between the expansion and specialization that define so much of AAA development, Kuhlmann, who's now working at Tencent's Lightspeed LA studio, began to miss getting his hands dirty as a designer, and grew frustrated with all the red tape at the company. This is what happens when companies grow and fragment: when you go bigger, you go slower.
"When you get to that size, you can't have people just popping into Todd Howard's office to chat about a design point," Kuhlmann says. "He's not having lunch with everybody… It's very different when it's 400 people, four studios, big business, and Microsoft is now involved."
"Communication breakdowns" intensified during Starfield's prolonged development, Kuhlmann says, with "the leads in one studio" potentially providing different answers to critical questions than "the leads in the other studio" under Bethesda's umbrella.
Kuhlmann, like several other high-level developers, gradually slid into a managerial role with less hands-on creative work. A "bureaucratic" feel crept in. "The expectation was… your job can't be also making content if you're actually managing that scope of the project," he says.
For what felt like 11 years, extended by the abnormally long road (even for Bethesda) to Starfield, Kuhlmann says he'd been waiting to step into the design lead role on The Elder Scrolls 6. After Skyrim, he says Howard had verbally promised him the position – "I had been told that that was going to happen" – but when the time finally came, he was only offered an "important role" on the game by Howard.
"But what I wanted and what he wanted were different at that point," Kuhlmann says. He notes that things had certainly changed for the company and for The Elder Scrolls IP, "and the role of lead on TES 6 is very different from the role of lead on Skyrim." And with the benefit of hindsight, given the state of the studio, his creative appetite, and his experience with Starfield, he doubts he would've liked leading The Elder Scrolls 6 anyway.
"They may have made the right decision of saying [I] shouldn't be in this role," he concludes.
Last year, Kuhlmann said The Elder Scrolls 6 was "different than what I would have done, and so I don't know how I'm going to feel" when it finally, surely, is released in 2035. He's also argued that Howard leans "not towards the weird stuff" of the series, betting on a tamer Oblivion and Skyrim-style tone for the next entry.
