Todd Howard blocked an Elder Scrolls spin-off to avoid another New Vegas debate

Todd Howard never wanted an outsider to make The Elder Scrolls.

Former Bethesda designer Kurt Kuhlmann says Howard, the director behind the series, is "very protective" of the property and rejected the idea of a spin-off built by another studio. The comments were published on 28 September 2026 by Video Games Chronicle.

Kuhlmann knows the studio from the inside. He worked at Bethesda for 20 years. He was a senior designer on Fallout 3 and Fallout 4, and co-lead designer on The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim, the fantasy role-playing game where players explore a vast open world.

The model he was asked about was Fallout: New Vegas. That game used Bethesda's post-nuclear Fallout setting but was developed by Obsidian Entertainment rather than Bethesda itself. A spin-off, in this sense, is a side entry made by a different team inside an existing world.

Kuhlmann said Howard did not want to repeat what happened next. New Vegas started a long fan debate about who makes a better Fallout game. Howard wanted no equivalent argument over The Elder Scrolls.

Rights history matters here. The Elder Scrolls was created by Bethesda. Fallout was different. Bethesda picked up the series from publisher Interplay in 2004, after the earlier Fallout games had been made elsewhere. That distinction, Kuhlmann suggested, helps explain the protectiveness.

He also said The Elder Scrolls Online eased the pressure. That is the multiplayer online version of the fantasy world, maintained separately from the main single-player games. In his words, it "took the heat off" Bethesda. The breathing space let the studio focus on Starfield, its space-faring role-playing game, without constant calls for a new single-player Elder Scrolls.

The wait for what comes next is already long. The Elder Scrolls 6 was announced with a short teaser trailer at E3 2018. Bethesda said in 2023 that the game was still in early development.

Beyond that, the order is set. Howard confirmed to IGN that Fallout 5 will be Bethesda Game Studios' next game after The Elder Scrolls 6. He has also said Fallout 5 will recognise the events of the Fallout television series, according to IGN Middle East.

For fans, this clarifies the road ahead. One studio holds the pen on The Elder Scrolls. There will be no outside interpretation to compare, and no shortcut around the wait.