Kurt Kuhlmann spent two decades working at Bethesda on several games in the Elder Scrolls and Fallout franchises, as well as Starfield. Now, he’s opening up about his vision for the 6th Elder Scrolls game and the potential role the delay in that game’s development played in his leaving the studio.
Kurt Kuhlmann is known as an Elder Scrolls loremaster specifically because of his longevity at the studio and the many games he’s working on. He hoped to be given the lead design role on Elder Scrolls 6.
However, the studio chose someone else, and that person has yet to be publicly named. Speaking with PC Gamer, Kuhlmann claimed that Todd Howard promised him the lead design role in the forthcoming game, but the project kept being pushed off to focus on other releases and ultimately never came to fruition.
“After Fallout 4, we didn’t go to TES6, we made Fallout 76, and then even then, we didn’t make TES6, we made Starfield, which became this extremely long project compared to other ones. So from my point of view, I’ve been waiting like 11 years to be the lead on TES6,” he says. “Bruce [Nesmith] and I had been the co-leads on Skyrim. I think most people would call it a successful project, so I thought that it wasn’t unreasonable for me to think that I could be a successful lead on TES6. It wasn’t just my expectation—I had been told that that was going to happen.
Iconic Star Wars Movie Shaped Kurt Kuhlmann’s Vision for Elder Scrolls 6
Speaking a little on his vision for the game’s storyline and direction, Kuhlmann notes that he drew inspiration from the second Star Wars film, The Empire Strikes Back.
He’d wanted The Thalmor to be the villains that would end up conquering the day by the end of the campaign, paving the way for the next entrant in the series. To him, this was a welcome diversion from the typical storytelling Bethesda relies on.
Bethesda is currently working on Fallout 5, and the team hopes you play the game for many hours, potentially 600. Still, there is no release window for that game at this time. Todd Howard recently said that most employees are engaged with work on Elder Scrolls 6, while also claiming that Fallout is the game they’re working on the most. Read more about that here.
In more major news for The Elder Scrolls franchise, Elder Scrolls Online recently received a paid battle pass system. Learn more about that here. Also, don’t forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter.
