Why The Elder Scrolls never got its own New Vegas — a former Bethesda dev explains

Skyrim co-lead designer Kurt Kuhlmann has shed some light on why The Elder Scrolls never got a Fallout: New Vegas-style spin-off from an outside studio — and the short answer is that The Elder Scrolls Online quietly made the question irrelevant.

Speaking to FRVR, Kuhlmann pointed to ESO as the main pressure valve. "I do think The Elder Scrolls Online took the heat off," he said. "There was a new Elder Scrolls product, and it was ongoing. It was creating new content constantly." He also acknowledged that for a large chunk of the fanbase, ESO simply is The Elder Scrolls — their entry point, their ongoing home, and what they want more of. Beyond ESO, Kuhlmann floated another reason: the fandom friction that followed New Vegas. That game sparked years of debate over whether Obsidian had outshone Bethesda on their own IP, and Kuhlmann suggested Todd Howard had no interest in recreating that dynamic with The Elder Scrolls. "Todd, from my time there, he is very protective of it," he said. Unlike Fallout, which Bethesda acquired from Interplay, TES was built entirely in-house — making Howard's protectiveness over the franchise easier to understand.

Kuhlmann left Bethesda in 2023 under difficult circumstances, so his perspective carries the weight of someone who was inside the room for a long time. The New Vegas comparison has never really gone away in RPG circles — Obsidian's work on that game remains a high-water mark for the genre, and fans have spent years wondering why a similar arrangement never happened for Tamriel. Obsidian did eventually make its own first-person fantasy RPG, Avowed, released last year — and the studio has since been pointed toward the Fallout franchise under Bethesda, which adds another layer of irony to the whole conversation.

ESO continues forward, though with reduced ambition after significant layoffs at developer Zenimax Online Studios forced delays to major planned features. As for a single-player Elder Scrolls spin-off, it seems like the window has probably closed — Elder Scrolls 6 is still somewhere on the horizon, and Bethesda appears intent on keeping that one firmly in-house.