Summary
- The Elder Scrolls 6 has a choice between skipping far forward in time or exploring the Fourth Era's familiar characters and setting.
- A time skip of 50-100 years could add intrigue, but could create more complications.
- Bethesda is facing challenges with long development times, something the studio can't afford to repeat.
Intentionally or not, there has been a long time between Skyrim and The Elder Scrolls 6 in real terms, and this has raised a lot of questions about when it could be set. Skyrim bucked the trend that prior entries had established, with TES 1 to 4 taking place during the reign of Emperor Uriel Septim, while TES 5 picked things up after 201 years. This opens the door to the possibility that the next game will have a similarly long time skip, but that might not be the best thing for a number of reasons.
Going by previous development timelines, multiple Elder Scrolls games could have been released since 2011, but in a world where development timelines are getting longer and studios are diversifying into multiple projects, it makes sense that The Elder Scrolls 6 hasn’t materialized yet.
Given Skyrim’s monumental success all these years later, Bethesda might want to capitalize on it by exploring the Fourth Era further, returning to a familiar cadence of games being set a few years apart, although said long development timelines could cause issues with this approach. There are pros and cons to both approaches, and some may not be immediately obvious.
What The Elder Scrolls 6 Should Learn From Tainted Grail
Tainted Grail shows how Elder Scrolls 6 could push harder into narrative variety, exploration depth, and actual build freedom without compromise.
Should the Elder Scrolls 6 Take Place Close to Skyrim’s Timeline or Further in the Future?
The Case Against a Time Skip
Bethesda put a lot of time into making sure Skyrim feels different from the Third Era, when the previous games took place. The year 201 is hundreds of years into a period of sharp decline, showing an Empire on its knees, elves being ascendent again, and Dragons returning to the world. In many ways, the Kalpic wheel is turning on itself, returning to a more chaotic Dawn Era, and there are a lot of ways that the studio could build on these developments. There are plenty of characters who could make a return and play important roles in the next game, the way Neloth did on Solstheim, including a few unlikely ones, such as Paarthurnax.
Many other TES games have taken place in completely different time periods to the main series, such as ESO's Second Era.
The Skyrim Civil War is one such example. Other conflicts like it will surely be erupting across other provinces. Hammerfell is ripe for one such war, and its independence in the Fourth Era could make for an incredible role-playing playground for factions to fight over.
The world is a very different place, and having a few games in one era would help construct a cohesive picture of this very different time period that contrasts with the Third and Second Era as seen in other games. A lot of fans want to see the Civil War resolved after more than a decade of uncertainty, and many players wouldn’t mind which side won, as long as they got closure.
There’s also the argument that Skyrim’s time jump wasn’t handled well. Bethesda doesn’t seem to understand time, as a lot of dates in the Fourth Era timeline make clear. Why Winterhold is still a ruin 80 years after the Great Collapse makes no sense; how the Nords Imperialized so much in the space of 200 years despite a weakened Empire, and how Gelebor hasn’t gone totally crazy guarding the Chantry of Auriel for thousands of years alone are a few examples. Doing it again would probably cause more than a few inconsistencies to crop up again in the timeline, and Skyrim’s 200-year time skip could easily be shortened to about 50.
Bethesda's other games have also received criticism about their timelines, such as Fallout 4's Ghoul child stuck in a fridge being one infamous example.
The Case for a Time Skip
Going forward in time much further, say, 50 to 100 years, could let Bethesda explore a very different time period. Players will be incredibly familiar with Skyrim at this point, and its time period has been explored a lot. By going further, Bethesda could add even more intrigue to the setting, showing that Tamriel in The Elder Scrolls' Fourth Era may be one of chaos and change, but it certainly isn’t stagnant.
While it’s possible The Elder Scrolls 6 takes place five years after Skyrim, it will release at least 15 years later, and repeating this development cadence alongside a shorter universe timeline could cause issues with returning voice actors, retaining developers, and keeping the world fresh and interesting. It is likely that plenty of developers have joined and then left Bethesda since Skyrim, hoping to work on an Elder Scrolls project, but never getting the chance to, and the natural turnover could cause problems with keeping the world cohesive.
The Elder Scrolls Online - Introducing Subclassing Trailer
The Elder Scrolls Online previews its upcoming Subclassing System, which gives players a lot more flexibility in their approach to the MMORPG.
Skipping forward in time could also bring back some of the weirdness that many fans loved in older games. Arguably, Oblivion and Skyrim watered down Morrowind’s weirdness, but a time skip to a much further point could give Bethesda room to change that, showing the world gradually adapting to a stranger time. As mentioned, diving deep into Kalpa lore shows how the world might be getting stranger again as things move back toward the Dawn, and a time skip would help to explore Kalpa theory by reintroducing more bizarre concepts such as Mananauts and the wild, storm-wreathed Nords again.
The Elder Scrolls 6 Is Still a Long Way Away
Todd Howard himself said that he doesn’t want to repeat the long gap between Elder Scrolls games again as, naturally, it has caused more than a few problems for the series. Skyrim has become the eternal game, and while its staying power is legendary, it isn’t ideal for one of the most profitable games of all time.
Judging by most community reactions, there seems to be a split on how Bethesda should approach a time skip, but there are a few more voices seeming to advocate for staying close to Skyrim. It makes sense, as Skyrim is beloved, and many fans would rather stick in a familiar era than risk jumping too far ahead again. However Bethesda handles things, it's clear that The Elder Scrolls 6 will not be releasing soon, so there’s plenty of time to speculate.
- Released
- 2026
- ESRB
- m
- Developer(s)
- Bethesda Game Studios
- Publisher(s)
- Bethesda Softworks
- Franchise
- The Elder Scrolls
- Genre(s)
- RPG
- Platform(s)
- PC, Xbox (Original)
