Back in 2010, Bethesda released the beloved Fallout: New Vegas as a spin-off to the main Fallout series, sitting between 2008's Fallout 3 and 2015's Fallout 4. As it turns out, a similar thing could have potentially happened with The Elder Scrolls as well.
Speaking on Twitter this week, Fallout: New Vegas writer Chris Avellone revealed that when he was at Obsidian, one of the ideas he pitched was for a spin-off that would "serve the same function as FNV did".
Here's a bit of what he had to say:
"One of the Elder Scrolls proposals (which I pitched) was intended to serve the same function as FNV did between F3 and F4, to provide more adventures in the setting during the years before the next Bethesda release."
"I thought it couldn't hurt to try and push a similar system to what Treyarch/Activision had going with Call of Duty at the time (but hopefully less rushed). Bethesda could do a core release, then we'd release a TES title (in same world or a divergent timeline/era) before the next big Beths. push."
Despite Chris and Obsidian's interest in this, it apparently never gained much traction, and he also mentioned that he "never got the impression Bethesda was happy with FNV's reception (good and bad)".
As a result, aside from The Elder Scrolls Online, we haven't seen a new mainline Elder Scrolls game since Skyrim back in 2011, although there have been many, many iterations of it since then. It would have been interesting to see what a FNV-style Elder Scrolls spin-off would have looked like in the 2010s, but alas it was clearly never meant to be!