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I bet if you went back and told a gamer in 2024 that the next year would have everybody talking about gargantuan game franchise The Elder Scrolls again, they'd be pretty excited. Then they'd probably be less excited to find out it wasn't because of Skyrim sequel The Elder Scrolls VI finally dropping, but a surprise release of Oblivion: Remastered, a phenomenally-reviewed redux of Skyrim's immediate predecessor. Well we're about to do a little fortune-telling of our own here, as we tell you that the way Elder Scrolls VI finally comes out may look very similar to what we experienced this year.

Let us explain.

Todd Howard, president of Elder Scrolls studio Bethesda, recently sat down for a chat with GQ ahead of another season of Prime Video's Fallout, the live-action adaptation of another one of the studio's biggest game franchise. During the course of the conversation, Howard did speak about the highly-anticipated next game in the Elder Scrolls saga, mostly just to clarify things like the fact that it's "still a long way off."

But right at the tail-end of the conversation, Howard was able to peel back the curtain a little bit of the game's mysterious production process, after his interviewer asked whether we might see Elder Scrolls VI shadow-dropped in the same way the remaster of Elder Scrolls IV was.

"You might say that was a test run," Howard said of the surprise Oblivion release. "It worked out well."

That's putting it mildly. In its first week of availability, Oblivion: Remastered reached a whopping 4 million players (according to Windows Central), becoming the 3rd best selling game of 2025 (measured on May 6 by IGN), just a few days later. Whatever Howard and the gang were testing was a smashing success, apparently - so much so that we could see Elder Scrolls being surprises for as long as they keep releasing.

Oblivion: Remastered is available to play now. 

The gaming industry has come a long way since Pong blew all our minds in the 70s. We've got everything you need to know about the next big thing in games. Of course, Grand Theft Auto VI is going to be the big game of 2026, but there are plenty of other games coming out between now and then. Here is our starter guide for every gamer:

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