Ingen forventer vel, at The Elder Scrolls VI udkommer lige foreløbig - snarere tidligst i 2027, og sandsynligvis endda senere. Det betyder, at vi efterhånden har ventet absurd længe, når man tænker på, at The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim udkom helt tilbage i 2011, og den sjette installation blev annonceret i 2018.
Men nu ser udviklingen endelig ud til at bevæge sig i et fornuftigt tempo. I et interview med IGN forklarer Bethesda-veteranen Todd Howard, at processen glider mere glat end med Starfield, og at han er yderst tilfreds med den nye spilmotor. Her er, hvad han siger om fordelene ved Creation Engine 3 (hvor Starfield blev udviklet på version 2) og styrken ved at have en proprietær motor:
"Well, gosh, I don't want to spoil too much. I mean, you get your whiz-bang rendering shiny pixel stuff that everyone would expect. And I think the change to Creation Engine 2 from where we were for Starfield was such an upheaval for what we were doing. We felt coming out of that, we could have managed that better. So going into Creation Engine 3, I can't say enough about our tech staff and how they've handled that transition so that we can still be making a game while that is going on."
Howard blev også spurgt, hvilke lektioner de tager med sig fra Starfield til The Elder Scrolls VI, hvortil han svarede følgende og antydede i forbifarten, at spillet allerede er spilbart:
"But the one thing I'd say is really in the tech as we're going to Creation Engine 3. Again, the team has done a really incredible job at not just pushing what it is, but how it's integrated into our development cycle. So, you don't feel that what we're doing on a day-to-day basis, like when the game goes down. So, we're in a fortunate position where the builds of the game are really consistently working every day. Well, not every day, but we've had more days than we've ever had where the build is good, there's new stuff in it, and we can play it."
Overordnet set ser udviklingen ud til at forløbe mere gnidningsfrit, og Howard fortæller, at de har kunnet undgå mange af de flaskehalse, de tidligere stod overfor:
"And when you're making those kinds of technical changes as we talked about, often you're pulling the rug out from under the team who's making content. [You don't want] to be like, 'Okay, that doesn't work for this period of time, you're going to have to wait until we get that working again.' And we've done a really good job of managing that on this game. And with Starfield, we struggled there for a number of years in terms of when we went through the engine change."
Det er et omfattende interview med flere spændende detaljer, som er værd at læse for fans af Bethesdas spiluniverser. Det, vi tager med os, er, at The Elder Scrolls VI for alvor er begyndt at røre på sig. Det betyder naturligvis ikke, at det lander lige om hjørnet, men måske får vi et første glimt af det tidligere, end vi går og tror. Vi kan i hvert fald ikke forestille os et bedre lanceringsspil til den rygtede Xbox Helix.