The Fallout TV series is a bonafide hit, and Season 2, if anything, is even more highly regarded by both critics and fans than Season 1.
So, wouldn’t it make sense for Bethesda to make lightning strike twice? People love Skyrim even more than Fallout, so shouldn’t Bethesda try to turn The Elder Scrolls into a TV series, too?
Maybe not! Bruce Nesmith, lead designer on Skyrim, doesn’t think so, anyway. In an interview with PressboxPR, Nesmith, who left Bethesda in 2021 during the development of Starfield, laid out the reasons it wouldn’t make sense for Bethesda to try to duplicate what it’s done with the Fallout show.
“What you have to realize about things like the Fallout TV show is that they don’t make Bethesda money directly,” Nesmith said. “I would be shocked if Bethesda is making any money that they care about really, not when you make literally billions of dollars on Skyrim. What you’re going to make by licensing the IP to this TV show is just peanuts.”
If the Fallout show isn’t making Bethesda money, what is it doing? “What it gets you is notoriety. It’s marketing. Do they really need marketing for Elder Scrolls 6?” he said.
Nesmith also said the setting of Skyrim is “a standard kind of fantasy” that wouldn’t stand out much in a world where we’ve already got The Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones. “There’s a dragon? I’ve seen dragons 20 times before. What are you giving to viewers that’s new?” he said.
“Different media have different needs and I don’t know that The Elder Scrolls would fit that media well. Maybe a movie but I would struggle to see a TV show. That would just be for promotional purposes but they’re not going to make a ton of money off it.”
Fallout, on the other hand, stands out because of its unusual premise and setting. “You look at Fallout, everything is special about it,” Nesmith said. “There is nothing like the Fallout universe anywhere else in gaming. It’s very unique. That makes it easy to make a TV show and draw eyeballs as opposed to going into a fantasy world where I’ve got elves and people throwing spells around.”
I think those are fair points, but there are other reasons to make a TV show. Like, I dunno, maybe the fans would really enjoy it? You know, those generations of diehard The Elder Scrolls fans who love Morrowind and Oblivion and Skyrim so much they’re still playing them regularly? I have a feeling they’d be thrilled to see an adaptation of The Elder Scrolls on TV—or at least would enjoy picking it apart if they found it lacking.
Also, as far as I can tell, people don’t seem to ever get sick of dragons and elves and people throwing spells around, so why not give it a shot? Plus, if they did make a Skyrim show, you know they’d give Walton Goggins a cameo. Don’t you want to see him in a Skyrim show as like a Greybeard or a Khajiit trader or something? I sure as hell do.
