Main Page

It might be nearly four and a half years old but Oblivion is still a hugely popular game, and IGN just placed it in the top ten XBox 360 games made so far. The same list rates Bethesda's followup, Fallout 3, as the second best game ever, which bodes well for TES V when it appears.

The Bethesda Blog has been around for ages, but there's now a new podcast too (RSS). The first one includes an interview with id software's Tim Willits and Todd Howard, Executive Producer of Oblivion and several other TES games.

An interesting comment from Howard is that he has been writing "relatively the same type of game for a very long time ... consoles are powerful enough now that we can do some pretty deep, dynamic kind of games", which could be taken to suggest that the previous news that a new game is "ready to show" means the new game is TES V.

Howard also says that he and the Bethesda development team have been working on the game since they finished Fallout 3. He adds that they are "not ready to talk about it yet but we are really excited with how it looks. I mean, if we were forced to show it right now we'd be proud to show it, but we just don't feel the timing's quite right yet to show it." and "It's the game everybody in the team really wants to play."

The only important news to come out of QuakeCon so far this year is a statement from Todd Howard that Bethesda has a new project in development and that it has been in development for two years.

Previous rumors had suggested that a new installment of The Elder Scrolls would be announced at QuakeCon, which finishes on Sunday, August 15 this year. The last installment of the series, Oblivion was released over four years ago, so a new game is well overdue.

UPDATE: In a EuroGamer interview released on August 16, Todd Howard gives a few more details. "One thing I can say is that from when you first hear about it to when it's out will be the shortest it's been for us. It's pretty far along. When we show it, we want to show a lot, because there's a lot of game there to play right now.

"You know, if Pete Hines came in and said, "I want you to show it," I'd be like, "Okay, I'm ready to show it." But we've just decided for now not to yet."

PC users have a chance to complete their TES collections on the cheap this weekend. Steam is celebrating the pre-release of Fallout 3: New Vegas by having a Bethesda Weekend and there is 66% off Oblivion GotY and 75% off Morrowind GotY, taking their prices down to $8.50/£6.80 and $5.00/£3.25 respectively.

VG247.com are reporting a rumor that Bethesda are planning to announce TES V at E3, contrary to a previous statement by Bethesda Vice President Pete Hines that such an announcement was unlikely. It has been confirmed that some announcement will be made, but the details are currently being kept secret. E3 runs from June 15-17 this year in Los Angeles.