Starfield and Elder Scrolls 6 taking longer than expected due to massive engine overhaul

Gamesindustry.biz wraps up the Develop:Brighton keynote from Bethesda Game Studios' Todd Howard. It was a talk about the past and present and he reveals Starfield and Elder Scrolls 6 are taking so long because of the massive engine overhaul the game developer is performing. Howard says the new game engine Bethesda is working on is the largest they've ever had, maybe even larger than Morrowind to Oblivion, because the engine needed more work than it had in previous times.

Howard says five times more people are working on the game engine than they've ever had before. He explained the new engine will use procedural generation and previously it was already revealed that both games will use photogrammetry to deliver very high-res textures.

"The overhaul on our engine is probably the largest we've ever had, maybe even larger than Morrowind to Oblivion," he says.

"There are things we do that we still like, the way we build our worlds, the way people can mod it -- these are things I think are fundamentally good about our tech stack. But from rendering to animation to pathing to procedural generation... I don't want to say everything, but it's a significant overhaul. It's taken us longer than we would have liked, but it's going to power everything we're doing with Starfield and Elder Scrolls 6. When people see the results, they'll hopefully be as happy as we are with what's on the screen and also how we can go about making our games."

Starfield and Elder Scrolls 6 were both announced at E3 2018, and it remains unknown when these games will be ready.