The Elder Scrolls never got a spin-off like Fallout: New Vegas because Todd Howard is protective of the IP, former dev says

A former Bethesda lead says the reason The Elder Scrolls was never given to another studio for a spin-off was because executive producer Todd Howard is “very protective” of the IP.

In an interview with FRVR, Kurt Kuhlmann – who was at Bethesda for 20 years and was a senior designer on Fallout 3 and 4, and co-lead designer on The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim – was asked why Bethesda didn’t do what it did with Fallout and give The Elder Scrolls to another studio to make a spin-off game.

Kuhlmann replied that while Fallout: New Vegas – which was developed by Obsidian instead of Bethesda – was very popular, it led to some players believing the series was better in Obsidian’s hands, and Todd Howard didn’t want the same thing to happen to The Elder Scrolls.

“The whole New Vegas thing did create this – at least the perception of this – ‘Who makes a better Fallout game? Oh, they should just give it to Obsidian’ [situation],” he explained.

“There are the Obsidian, New Vegas people that think obviously New Vegas is way better, Obsidian is way better at making those games, and why don’t they just get Fallout altogether.”

Kuhlmann said he didn’t “know that Todd wanted to create that situation again for The Elder Scrolls”, especially because The Elder Scrolls was entirely created by Bethesda whereas Fallout had been inherited from Interplay in 2004. As a result of this, Kulhmann noted that “Todd, from my time there, he is very protective of it”.

He believes that The Elder Scrolls Online, while not technically a single-player spin-off in the style of Fallout: New Vegas, provided enough content to give Bethesda the opportunity to work on Starfield without receiving too much pressure from Elder Scrolls fans asking for a new standalone solo adventure.

“I do think The Elder Scrolls Online took the heat off,” he explained. “There was a new Elder Scrolls product, and it was ongoing. It was creating new content constantly.

“There are a lot of people… I mean, I know [there are] the single-player people, I’m one of those people – but there are a lot of people to whom The Elder Scrolls is now The Elder Scrolls Online. That’s their experience with it. That’s what they love. That’s where they got their Elder Scrolls gaming experience, and that’s probably what they want more of.”

The Elder Scrolls 6 was announced via a teaser trailer at E3 2018. Shortly after this, Bethesda admitted that its release was still years away, and the game was said to still be in early development as of 2023.

It’s now been eight years since that teaser and players are still yet to see any of the game, though Xbox chief content officer Matt Booty said in June that it “looks amazing”, while in August Xbox CEO Asha Sharma visited Bethesda (during a protest against layoffs) and claimed online that the game’s “scale and grandeur are incredible”,