The short answer: Starfield came first
Bethesda Game Studios runs one major project through its core development pipeline at a time. After The Elder Scrolls VI was confirmed to exist in 2018, the studio's full production resources stayed committed to finishing Starfield, its first new IP in over twenty-five years, which released in 2023. TES VI existed in a smaller pre-production state during that window rather than active full-scale development, which is a large part of why years passed with almost nothing new to show.
One game at a time isn't unusual, it's the model
This isn't a Bethesda-specific quirk so much as how the studio has always operated. Skyrim, Fallout 4, Fallout 76, and Starfield were each developed in sequence rather than in parallel by the core team. The tradeoff is real: it means whichever project isn't currently up means waiting, but it also means each release gets the studio's full internal focus rather than split attention across two open-world games at once.
How this gap actually compares to past entries
This is where the wait genuinely stands apart from the series' own history. The gaps between earlier mainline games were consistently shorter: Arena to Daggerfall was about two years, Daggerfall to Morrowind roughly six, Morrowind to Oblivion four, and Oblivion to Skyrim five. Skyrim released in 2011. Even counting generously from the 2018 teaser, the gap to a still-unannounced release date already exceeds every previous interval in the series, and if you count from Skyrim's actual release instead of the teaser, it isn't close. That's the real reason this particular wait feels different from past ones, because by the series' own pattern, it is.
What this means for your expectations
Modern open-world RPGs on this scale simply take longer to build than they used to, across the entire industry, not just at Bethesda. Combine that industry-wide trend with Bethesda's one-project-at-a-time model and the Starfield priority, and the long wait becomes explainable rather than mysterious. It doesn't make it easier to sit through, but it does mean there's a real, unremarkable reason behind it rather than anything more dramatic.
Still waiting? Might as well have something to play.
Shop Elder Scrolls Games →Curious what the studio's other recent game might tell us? Read what Starfield tells us about Elder Scrolls 6, or head back to everything we know so far.