While it seems The Elder Scrolls VI won’t be out for a few years at the least, game director Todd Howard teased games will be playing it for decades.

Making an appearance on Lex Fridman’s podcast, the Bethesda boss talked up a lot of topics – but was obviously drilled on giving some kind of release for the sixth mainline fantasy RPG.

“I have a vague idea,” Howard said. “I wish it was soon. We want it out, too, and I wish they didn’t take as long as they did, but they do. And look, I mean, if I could go back in time, it would never have been my plan to wait as long as it’s taken for it.”

Howard discussed how to match the scale of previous games, and then some – echoing previous comments he made that The Elder Scrolls VI would be replayable for a long time.

Furthermore, Bethesda has been apparently changing up how they design the game, from pre-production to full development, with the mindset that people will play it for years.

“We’re going to make sure we do it right for everybody,” Howard said. “People are playing games for a long time, you know Skyrim’s 11 years old – still probably our most played game, and so we don’t see it slowing down.”

He added, “And people will probably be playing it 10 years from now also, so you have to think ok, people are going to play the next Elder Scrolls game for decades, two decades, and that does change the way you think about how you architect it from the get-go.”

While there’s no release date in sight for The Elder Scrolls VI, we know that Starfield is planned for release in 2023 on both PC and a console exclusive for Xbox Series X|S.