Sit down. “I’m preaching patience.” Stay calm. “I don’t want fans to feel anxious.” There’s no need to hide underneath a chest of drawers. Some of those are things I’ve had to tell my firework-averse cat around Bonfire Night time here in the UK. Some of them are things Todd Howard has said about The Elder Scrolls 6 in a fresh interview that’s also about Bethesda’s imminently to be released again radioactive golden goose, Fallout 4.

The Elder Scrolls 6 is “still a long way off”, according to the Bethesda bossman, speaking to GQ from an office that has shelves (ooh, fancy). “I like to just announce stuff and release it,” he added. “My perfect version – and I’m not saying this is going to happen – is that it’s going to be a while and then, one day, the game will just appear.”

I mean, technically it would be reappearing, given we all famously saw some its hills, ruins, and shrubbery back in 2018. Well, assuming that E3 trailer actually showed a landscape that resembles anything like one that we’ll be exploring all these years on. I personally can’t wait to try and climb the exact rock you can see in the foreground on the right, at the 14 second or so mark. Sure, it’s not one of the big mountains, but you’ve gotta start somewhere.

Anyway, back to cleanliness is next to Toddliness. He was also asked in light of his comment about the game just appearing whether Bethesda could shadow drop The Elder Scrolls 6, as they did with Oblivion Remastered. “You might say that was a test run. It worked out well,” was his answer. If Oblivion Remastered’s anything to go by, in that case we can look forward to at least six months or so of leak and report-inspired chatter in the run-up, to make sure this game Bethesda confirmed they were making about seven years ago really catches everyone off guard.

In news I’ll adopt a less snarky tone for, Howard also spoke a bit about meeting the folks from series wiki the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages when they popped by to design a character for the game as a memorial to a forum user whose mid-2000s roleplay campaigns have some interesting connections to proper Elder Scrolls lore.

The dev was also asked whether he’d drink toilet water to survive during a real nuclear apocalypse, which was the point at which he drew the line on a series of hypotheticals based around that scenario. He thinks he’d “do ok” if the world ended, which is all the proof I need that he’s probably never watched the 1984 film Threads. Or, at the very least, he’s somehow managed to forget about it. We’d all be fucked, fella.

Maybe he’s got a plan to install his head on an immortal mech body or something, and he’ll come hunt me down for chatting shit once the bombs drop. Now that would be a shadow drop with the element of surprise unquestionably on its side.