The Elder Scrolls 6 was announced in 2018, with the last game in the mainline franchise, Skyrim, being released in 2011. It was announced as an Xbox exclusive and, although the days of console exclusives appear to be waning, games made for specific consoles, especially franchises, still occur. The Elder Scrolls 6 has taken so long to release that it may be lapped by The Outer Worlds 2, which is slated for a 2025 release.
The Outer Worlds was released in 2019, eight years after Skyrim, and yet its sequel is very likely to be released long before Skyrim‘s. While AAA video games tend to take longer to release than in the past for various reasons, Obsidian is due to release both Avowed and The Outer Worlds 2 in 2025. Both games are likely to be smaller than Bethesda’s games, but Obsidian is filling a gap left by Bethesda and other studios because of the long wait times between games.
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The two franchises are very different, in that The Outer Worlds is a much smaller franchise than The Elder Scrolls, but it says a lot that the wait for The Elder Scrolls 6 has been so long that another RPG series on the same console has not only launched, but has begun to flourish with sequels. The Outer Worlds 2‘s trailer at the 2024 Game Awards was well-received, and it looks like Obsidian has a fun, entertaining experience to offer players.
The development time for AAA video games has begun to take longer, with some games taking a decade or more to release. Many of these games aren’t in development for the full length of time, and are instead put on hold as internal development teams are rotated between different projects, rather than different teams working on different projects simultaneously. This can make the wait between games excruciatingly long, particularly for RPGs with branching narratives or open worlds. Other problems that can make development longer are rebooting projects, as what happened several times with BioWare’s Dragon Age: The Veilguard, or having a game sit in pre-production for many years before actually moving into development, which may have been the case with The Elder Scrolls 6.
Obsidian and the Changing RPG Landscape
As Bethesda had spent most of its resources on its new IP, Starfield, and Fallout 4 before that, its developers were working on other projects that had put The Elder Scrolls on hold for years. Now that both Fallout 4 and Starfield have been released, The Elder Scrolls 6 likely has the full attention of Bethesda’s team. The Elder Scrolls 6‘s launch is sadly still likely several years away, especially if it needs at least a few years of development with the full attention of Bethesda.
Obsidian is set to release both Avowed and The Outer Worlds 2, two eagerly anticipated RPGs that appear to fill the gap left behind by Bethesda. While these games are likely to be smaller in scale than both Starfield and The Elder Scrolls 6, Obsidian has a reputation for creating games with incredible storytelling, great characters, and fun gameplay, and its games are usually well-received by players who love RPGs. In Bethesda’s absence, Obsidian has stepped up to the plate and has shown that perhaps RPGs don’t need the massive scale that AAA studios demand.
Obsidian’s sequel to 2019’s The Outer Worlds. The action RPG will be available on PC and Xbox Series X/S, and it will debut on Game Pass.
- Franchise
- The Outer Worlds
- Released
- 2025-00-00
- Publisher(s)
- Xbox Game Studios
- Engine
- Unreal Engine 4