Bethesda Has Three Big Projects in Development Concurrently

During his conversation with comedian Pete Holmes at this year’s DICE, Todd Howard revealed that the team at Bethesda Game Studios is currently working on three “longer-term projects” that will be “in many ways” different from anything the studio has done before but still “Bethesda-style”, which means they will be “big and crazy”. Howard also quickly noted that their new Montreal studio will mostly be working on mobile games and “other stuff”, but he didn’t clarify what he meant with the latter.

I’ve embedded Polygon’s recording of the full day 2 DICE livestream below, so you can watch the full Todd Howard conversation starting from roughly 2:30:55. Most of the conversation focuses on the high-level design of Bethesda’s titles and their own processes and goals, not to mention Howard’s own thoughts on videogames and their impact on people. In other words, don’t watch if you’re expecting a large amount of teasers on Bethesda’s future titles:

I will also note that, while Howard mentions that three projects are currently “in development”, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re all in production. Considering the size of Bethesda’s team and their modus operandi, it’s far more likely that two of the projects are in the early stages of design, while another is currently in pre-production and switching to production as Fallout 4’s team slowly moves away from the game.

Even so, this is certainly an ambitious step up from how Bethesda operated during their PlayStation 3/Xbox 360 years, and it’s only possible because the bulk of the team has been working together for 10+ years, according to Howard himself. Three projects are a big undertaking for a team of that size, especially when one considers that they’re “very different” from what the studio has done before. Incidentally, that mention makes me wonder if they will even be RPGs, but I suppose time will tell on that front.