The story begins with a shovel in the cemetery, digging up a old tweet from Chris Avellone mentioning that he had tried, many times, to work again with the Bethesda franchises. Without success. The author clarified his comments with new posts explaining the situation in more detail. “One of our proposals regarding Elder Scrolls (which I personally pitched) was to serve the same purpose as Fallout New Vegas between Fallout 3 and Fallout 4: to offer more adventures in this universe while waiting for the next Bethesda game. […] I never got the impression that Bethesda was happy with the reception (good or bad) of New Vegas.” Avellone particularly mentions the serious technical problems of the episode upon release, mentioning that it was a fairly strong point of contention with the Howard house.
This is true. One of the Elder Scrolls proposals (which I pitched) was intended to serve the same function as FNV did between F3 and F4, to provide more adventures in the setting during the years before the next Bethesda release. https://t.co/7yJNkn8cUY
— Chris Avellone (@ChrisAvellone) December 18, 2023
In a better world
Among the projects that remained unheeded, Chris Avellone mentions a host of episodes in the Elder Scrolls universe, including another post-apocalyptic adventure. “If Bethesda didn’t want their main world touched, we could have done a spin-off where you explored an alternate world where the hero failed to save the world in previous Elder Scrolls. 😉“A kind of hell on Tamriel where Mehrunes Dagon would rule the world, perhaps.
Avellone also proposed an organization “a la Call of Duty” where Obsidian could regularly take over from Bethesda studios, like the big relay game between Infinity Ward, Treyarch and Sledgehammer. A proposal unfortunately refused by the American publisher. The author notes, however, that the success of Elder Scrolls Online more or less compensates for the absence of Elder Scrolls VI. As a reminder, this new episode (announced far too early by Todd Howard) is currently in development at Bethesda, now that the Starfield colossus has been born. Finally, in the distant future , the time will come for Fallout 5.
Chris Avellone left Obsidian in June 2015. The studio is currently working on Avowed, an RPG that looks damn similar to an Elder Scrolls derivative according to the first images, and The Outer Worlds 2, a franchise very (too much?) often compared to a Fallout New Vegas in space. History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.