While Bethesda juggles a lot of pressure these days, between working on both The Elder Scrolls 6 and whatever's happening in Fallout, it's also a creatively nourishing environment, because the devs get to enjoy two distinct flavors of storytelling.
Flipping between the properties is a challenge, but it gives people much-needed breaks, too, as two creatives recently told the PC Gamer magazine.
"It keeps things fresh. It keeps you from getting bored," Istvan Pely, an artist at Bethesda, says. "You have the opportunity to have some distance from a franchise for a few years, and that's enough time to sort of develop a hunger: 'All right, I want to go again.'"
This kind of relay is incredibly valuable when you're entrenched in an upcoming release the way Bethesda developers have to be. Oblivion, Skyrim, and Fallouts 3 and 4 were massive undertakings, and the next installments of each respective series will be bigger again. That's without mentioning Starfield, the latest new IP from the studio. As much as you might love science fiction or fantasy, that kind of work can be tiring.
"You work on the same thing for long enough, sometimes it can become – not boring – but it can become monotonous," Angela Browder, studio and production director at Bethesda, adds. "The transition, to go from Fallout to Elder Scrolls, and then back to Fallout, and then to Starfield, all of these things just get your creativity flowing."
Having such versatility is a rare thing in the industry, especially at Bethesda’s level. While anticipation is sky high, there's a lot of space for the teams to experiment and throw around ideas, because the next Elder Scrolls and Fallout games have colossal assured install bases.
Of course, it would be nice if we knew more about what's going on in either, but that's a different conversation. Todd Howard's been teasing something to do with the wasteland for some time, and it seems like no amount of bottle caps can get us any more information until the company's good and ready. We'll keep you informed.
