Bethesda's Former Elder Scrolls Loremaster On Why He Left,... (2026)

Kurt Kuhlmann, the longtime Elder Scrolls "loremaster", hasn't revealed why he left Bethesda in 2023 after more than 20 years—until now.

His departure didn't make headlines but it rumbled those who know the series best. Michael Kirkbride, who worked alongside Kuhlmann on Morrowind and Oblivion, wrote at the time that "Kurt was the best writer that TES ever had… his leaving will be to the creative detriment of [The Elder Scrolls] 6."

"It was almost certainly time for a change," Kuhlmann, who now works at the Tencent-owned studio Lightspeed LA, tells me. "There were some things that had been going on for a long time that I'd not been super happy with."

Some were an inevitable result of Bethesda's boom years: with hundreds of developers across multiple studios making Starfield, communication sometimes broke down and developers felt disconnected from senior management, Kuhlmann says.

But there's another reason—and it's linked to a promise Todd Howard made to him about The Elder Scrolls 6.

Kuhlmann's tenure at Bethesda was split in two. As a junior designer in 1996 and 1997 he worked on The Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall, The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard, and pre-production of Morrowind. He returned in 2003 and was involved in every major Bethesda game after that point, including as co-lead designer on Skyrim and as lead systems designer on Starfield.

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He became the Elder Scrolls "loremaster" because of his longevity at the studio and his shaping of Tamriel's history: when ZeniMax Online Studios began making the Elder Scrolls Online, Kuhlmann was assigned to field lore questions.

Over this two-decade second run, Bethesda ballooned and its culture changed, he says, particularly after 2011's Skyrim.

In the early days, it was a close group of developers—including Todd Howard—in a basement office, making decisions and eating in the canteen together, he says. But new offices opened and other studios were folded in by owner ZeniMax Media, including BattleCry Studios and Escalation Studios (both in 2018). Zenimax was itself bought by Microsoft in 2021.

Source: PC Gamer