After Starfield, Bethesda’s Next 10 Years Seem Set in Stone
After Bethesda gave viewers a deeper look at Starfield‘s gameplay during the 2023 Xbox Games Showcase, a lot of people became convinced that the game was going to be everything that they had ever wanted from a space-themed RPG. However, when Starfield actually came out a few months later, the general reception to the game wasn’t nearly as positive as many had hoped. Starfield got largely positive reviews from critics, but fans were a lot more polarized about the title, with many claiming that it was a huge step back compared to most of Bethesda’s previous works, including Fallout 4. The quality of the game’s writing, the poor facial animations of its NPCs, and the procedural generation system were all major points of criticism from players.
Despite its mixed reviews, exclusivity to Xbox and PC, and availability on Game Pass, Starfield seemed to perform pretty well commercially for the average Bethesda RPG. The game had more than 200,000 concurrent players on Steam at launch, and it was played by more than 15 million people worldwide as of November 2024. The public consensus on Starfield, however, did not improve in the years after its launch. Major updates for the game have been few and far between lately, and its first major paid expansion, Shattered Space, was met with a mostly mediocre reception at launch.
After What Happened With Starfield, Bethesda Probably Won't Release a New IP Again Anytime Soon
While Bethesda still intends to support Starfield in the coming years, it isn’t an exaggeration to say that the game probably did not end up being the genre-defining hit that the company wanted it to be. Starfield hasn’t cultivated a fanbase that’s nearly as large as the ones for Bethesda’s other two franchises, Fallout and The Elder Scrolls. The game sold decently, of course, but it feels like it could have done a lot more, for both Bethesda and the space RPG genre as a whole.
Bethesda Has Got a Lot on Its Plate at the Moment
Starfield was likely going to be Bethesda’s next pillar franchise, but judging by the game’s somewhat unsatisfactory performance, there’s a good chance that the company won’t release a new IP (or a sequel to Starfield) for at least the next 10 years. In addition to working on future Starfield updates, Bethesda is currently occupied with the development of The Elder Scrolls 6, which it says will be released in 2026 or beyond. After that, it plans to start production on the next mainline installment in the Fallout series, tentatively dubbed Fallout 5. At the same time, the company is also making major content updates for Fallout 76, and it’s providing creative assistance for Amazon’s widely-acclaimed Fallout TV show, as well.
If rumors are to be believed, Bethesda is currently working on a remake of Fallout 3, similar to the one it recently released for The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion. The development of this title, however, will likely be helmed by Virtuos again, instead of Bethesda proper.
Developing Starfield Was an Opportunity Bethesda Couldn't Pass Up On
As Bethesda often liked to tout in the game’s pre-release marketing, Starfield was the company’s first new IP in 25 years. Making the game was apparently of the utmost priority for Bethesda because, as studio executive Todd Howard explained in a 2021 IGN interview, the company believed that it wouldn’t get another opportunity to make a new IP again anytime soon. “We’d been wanting to do something else for a long time and play in a new universe,” Howard said, “So, if not now. . . when? It felt like, if we didn’t [make Starfield] then, the ‘when’ could be ‘never.'”
Bethesda Will Probably Only Make Fallout and Elder Scrolls Games for the Next Decade
Given Todd Howard’s statements and Bethesda’s busy production schedule, it seems that the studio will only be working on Fallout and Elder Scrolls games for the foreseeable future. While some gamers would probably be thrilled to hear that, considering how Starfield caused The Elder Scrolls 6‘s release to be postponed by a couple of years, it’s a bit unfortunate that Bethesda likely won’t be able to flex its creative muscles again for the time being. Starfield may have been a flawed game, but it would have been nice to see the company get another chance to refine its open-world formula and experiment with an original franchise, without being bound by the creative limitations that come with working on an established IP like Fallout and The Elder Scrolls.
