Breakdown
- Bethesda isn't working with anyone on an Elder Scrolls TV show
- The Elder Scrolls may not be a great fit for TV
- Elder Scrolls VI is still many years away
The Elder Scrolls, alongside World of Warcraft, is the quintessential fantasy series for video games. Outsting Ultima, Bethesda Game Studios' immersive first-person RPGs are some of the most beloved video games of all time, but there won't be an Elder Scrolls TV series.
Video game TV shows are becoming very popular. From the middling Halo series to the amazing debut season of Fallout, read our Fallout review here, more and more studios are taking a gamble on video game adaptations. Hell, even Twisted Metal and Gangs of London have TV shows, and they're both really good!
Speaking to IGN at the Fallout TV premiere in Los Angeles, Elder Scrolls game director and executive producer Todd Howard revealed that there likely won't be an Elder Scrolls series anytime soon. While The Elder Scrolls is overall more popular than Fallout, it's not as simple to translate from one medium into another.
"There's nothing in the works. Everybody asks, like, about Elder Scrolls, and I keep saying 'no' also," Howard told the outlet.
"You never know if something's gonna click," Howard said of both Elder Scrolls and Fallout. "But I think [Fallout] really came out of, 'we think things are aligning to do a high-quality job'. It wasn't forced. It was kind of a natural relationship and 'Hey, this sounds really cool'. As opposed to, 'we should have a show', right? It never came from that."
Nevertheless, an Elder Scrolls series could happen sometime in the future, although it is admittedly a more difficult series to adapt. With multiple reality-bending gods and philosophical nightmares like the Dragon Break being impossible to translate to the screen, any adaptation of The Elder Scrolls on screen would undoubtedly have to miss out on a lot of the franchise's coolest moments. However, if we can get out sweet Indoril Nerevar and Dagoth Ur smooching on screen, it would be worth it.
Currently, Bethesda is hard at work on The Elder Scrolls VI which has just entered a playable state at the company. With Starfield's first DLC expansion, Shattered Space, also in the works, there's a lot of new Bethesda content being created for fans to experience. Unfortunately, The Elder Scrolls VI is still many years away, and Fallout 5 might as well be a dream for most of us.
Fallout is available to stream right now on Amazon Prime.