Last year, Bethesda had a pretty huge showing at E3. They held their first press conference at the show and used it to announce Fallout 4, DOOM, and Dishonored 2, all but the last of which have since been released.
The show was decidedly light on the number of individual games, but featured a big chunk of DOOM as well as extended Fallout 4 gameplay and crafting.
But with such a massive game that was years in development, it makes sense that Bethesda would have a lot to show off. With only seven months since the release of Fallout 4, does Bethesda have another title of that scale to show off and subsequently release in a five month window following the announcement?
The only game that could really have that impact would be The Elder Scrolls VI. We know that Todd Howard, the director and producer behind both Fallout and The Elder Scrolls franchises, doesn’t typically work on more than one title at once, save for smaller spin-offs such as the iOS and Android game Fallout Shelter.
But is there a secret team that has been working on The Elder Scrolls along? Not likely, as that would mean doubling the size of their 100 person team.
So we have to ask: what is Bethesda going to show off at their showcase this year? The venue is about half the size of last year’s event, indicating it may be a more intimate affair with fewer eyes on everything they have to announce.
While we know about a few titles–Dishonored 2 and The Elder Scrolls: Legends card video game–there is a shroud of mystery over what else Bethesda could possibly show off. We will likely see a new game from The Evil Within developer Tango Gameworks, a company that hasn’t made a peep since 2012. It is also possible that MachineGames will show off a title they’ve been working on that is perhaps a sequel to Wolfenstein: The New Order or something new altogether.
Bethesda set an incredibly high bar with Fallout 4‘s announcement last year, and while we didn’t think the company had a high enough volume of titles to justify its own press conference, we’re even more worried about what the publisher will show off this year.
Then again, having absolutely no idea what they could show means that a massive surprise could be in the works and, if Bethesda manages to pull a rabbit out of its hat, it could very well outdo its performance from last year.