While The Elder Scrolls 6 entered the development stage at Bethesda, Todd Howard reveals that the majority of the studio is still working on Starfield. The latest Bethesda title broke several major milestones, garnering plenty of interest at launch on both PC and Xbox, but support for the game fizzled out in the following weeks, as now even Skyrim has more players than Starfield on Steam.
Though features such as the ship builder in Starfield have seen near-universal praise from the community, a significant number of players weren't exactly thrilled with the implementation of procedural generation. The lack of proper space exploration in Starfield, coupled with planetary exploration that started to feel monotonous to some, likely contributed to its popularity dropping since release.
Starfield Issues New Beta Update
The new Starfield beta update doesn't change its version number, but still debuts a variety of gameplay, UI, and graphics fixes and improvements.
In a recent video by Wired, Todd Howard sat down to discuss his long career as a video game developer, before also shedding some light on how many developers were working on Starfield's post-launch support. To everyone's surprise, Howard revealed that around 250 developers were still assigned to Starfield, which represents roughly 55% of Bethesda's 450-person crew. This means that Starfield is getting plenty more support before Bethesda moves on to The Elder Scrolls 6 proper.
As for what Starfield players can expect from the upcoming Shattered Space DLC, details are still hazy, but many are hoping that it features the House Va'ruun. Despite being one of the three major powers in the Settled Systems, House Va'ruun kept an aura of mystery all throughout Starfield's narrative, and getting to explore Dazra – or at the very least Va'ruun space – would be a welcome change of pace.
Unfortunately, this also means that The Elder Scrolls 6 may not come out for a long while, as its estimated that around 150 developers are currently working on the game. Though Skyrim remains a popular title, Bethesda fans have been waiting over a decade for the next big adventure in Tamriel. In the interim, The Elder Scrolls Online significantly expanded on the franchise's lore, and many ambitious modding projects such as Skywind made strides in their development.
Starfield
- Platform(s)
- PC , Xbox Series X , Xbox Series S
- Released
- September 6, 2023
- Developer(s)
- Bethesda
- Publisher(s)
- Bethesda
