If you’ve been wandering the wilds of Tamriel since 2011, you’ve probably spent more time thinking about The Elder Scrolls 6 than your own retirement fund. Well, we finally have some concrete tea to spill. Todd Howard recently sat down for a chat and confirmed that the next chapter in the saga won’t just be a “bigger Skyrim”—it’s officially running on the brand-new Creation Engine 3.
For those who aren’t tech-obsessed, this is a pretty big deal. While Starfield gave us a taste of Creation Engine 2, Bethesda has apparently spent the last few years overhauling that tech specifically for the fantasy needs of TES6. The goal? Bringing that classic Bethesda style back to the forefront. Todd actually referred to Fallout 76 and Starfield as “creative detours,” suggesting that they’re ready to return to the vibes of Skyrim and Oblivion—you know, that feeling of wandering into a forest and actually staying there for forty hours instead of fast-traveling between planets.
The most exciting nugget for the impatient among us is that the game is now internally playable. Bethesda has hit a major milestone, and the majority of the studio is now “all hands on deck” to bring this world to life. While we aren’t looking at a release date just yet, knowing that the devs are actually walking around in whatever province they’ve chosen (we’re still looking at you, Hammerfell) makes the wait feel a little less like a Dragon Shouted us into a mountain.
Of course, the internet has thoughts. There’s always that one group screaming for Bethesda to just switch to Unreal Engine 5, but the studio is sticking to its guns with its proprietary tech. Why? Two words: modding and interactivity. Bethesda games have a specific “soul” where you can pick up every single cheese wheel in a dungeon and hoard it in your basement. Switching engines might break that DNA. With Creation Engine 3, they’re aiming to keep that high-level interactivity while hopefully ditching the “loading screen simulator” reputation that followed their last few releases.
It’s a bold move to keep evolving their own engine in an era where everyone else is jumping ship to UE5, but it feels authentically Bethesda. They want to give us a world that feels “handcrafted” and ready for another decade of community mods and memes. We might still be “a while away” from seeing a full trailer, but at least we know the engine under the hood is getting a serious tune-up.
