Skyrim co-lead says Starfield was Todd Howard's call, not the studio's

Kurt Kuhlmann, co-lead designer on Skyrim, says Bethesda's long road to The Elder Scrolls 6 wasn't a matter of careful planning — it was a series of projects pushed onto the studio from above, with Starfield being the most surprising pivot of all.

Kuhlmann, speaking to FRVR, says most of the studio expected to move toward TES 6 after Fallout 4, but that never materialized. Fallout 76 wasn't originally meant to consume the whole studio, he explains, but it did. Then came Starfield — not as a grassroots passion project, but as a top-down directive. "It wasn't like Starfield was this big internal 'Hey, we all want to make this space game, Todd,'" Kuhlmann said. "It was very much, 'Guess what, team? We're making this space game.'" He adds that Howard secured sign-off from the Zenimax board and the studio followed. Kuhlmann says he personally would have preferred making TES 6 over both Fallout 76 and Starfield, and believes most of his colleagues felt the same way.

Kuhlmann's comments carry real weight. He spent over 20 years at Bethesda before leaving in 2023 — and his departure was not amicable. He was passed over for the lead designer role on The Elder Scrolls 6, which he'd clearly wanted. He also pointed to development problems on Starfield and a growing internal bureaucracy as signs of deeper issues at the studio. Skyrim launched in 2011, Fallout 4 in 2015 — by that rhythm, TES 6 could have plausibly arrived around 2019. Instead, it's still years away.

Todd Howard confirmed after a wave of Xbox layoffs this past summer that TES 6 is now Bethesda's primary development focus. There's no release window, but the detours appear to finally be over.