Yesterday, Xbox boss Asha Sharma teased The Elder Scrolls 6 with a tweet confirming she’d witnessed a live playthrough of Bethesda’s hotly anticipated open-world fantasy role-playing game. She did so by using asterisks where the subtitle of the game should be, which was all it took to send The Elder Scrolls fans down a rabbit hole from which they have now emerged with some solid theories.
Sharma called the game “The Elder Scrolls VI: ********.” Now, the number of asterisks used here may be meaningless. But! If the number (eight) does equal the number of characters in the actual subtitle, then we have some names that fit perfectly.
I’ve seen lots of people suggest Sentinel as the subtitle. Sentinel is a major coastal capital city of the Redguards located in the northwestern hills of Hammerfell, which some believe is the region in which The Elder Scrolls 6 is set. Indeed, some had suggested Sentinel even before Sharma’s tweet.
Previous The Elder Scrolls games have been named after various parts of Tamriel, although the rules governing this convention appear loose. The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall, for example, included all of High Rock and most of Hammerfell, not just the city of Daggerfall itself. Morrowind only included Vvardenfell, not the entire Morrowind region. Oblivion included more than just Oblivion, obviously (and the game itself was actually about trying to prevent oblivion). Skyrim was pretty much Skyrim. The point being: the name of an The Elder Scrolls game doesn’t dictate the region it’s set in literally. It could be named after a city as opposed to a region of Tamriel, so Sentinel would make sense.
Elsewhere, I’ve seen Dominion suggested as the subtitle (it’s eight characters). If true, that might suggest The Elder Scrolls 6 revolves around the Aldmeri Dominion. Balfiera is another name I’m seeing pop up (Balfiera is an island located within the center of the Iliac Bay). Iliac Bay, by the way, is yet another suggestion, but that would be nine characters, not eight.
If the number of asterisks does indeed relate to the subtitle of the game, then it may also rule out a few popular fan theories that have been doing the rounds over the years. The aforementioned Hammerfell (10 letters) and High Rock (nine characters) are now perhaps disproven as subtitles, if we’re running with this theory.
While many are taking this subtitle guessing game very seriously, some fans are having fun with it. “15 years of no games got us counting asterisks,” said one fan. “The Elder Scrolls VI: Doomsday,” was another super suggestion. I quite like this idea: “The Elder Scrolls VI: Nirnroot – a journey across Tamriel and beyond to collect a variety of newly discovered colors of Nirnroot, each with a more headache-inducing hum than the last.”
But let’s rule out one subtitle right here, right now, even though it fits the eight character bill: Skyrim 2. While I imagine a Skyrim 2 would sell tens of millions of copies (as a New Vegas 2 would), I can’t see Bethesda repeating itself when mainline The Elder Scrolls games come out so infrequently, and there’s so much more of Tamriel to explore.
The problem is, it may be years before we find out the truth, with The Elder Scrolls 6 reportedly at least two years away from launch despite being announced a sobering eight years ago. So, there’s plenty of time for the theory crafters to lose even more of their minds trying to work this one out.
Meanwhile, Bethesda staff inflated a giant rat outside the company’s offices during Sharma’s visit to play The Elder Scrolls 6, in protest at the mass layoffs Xbox suffered last month. Current and former Bethesda staff told IGN that Microsoft’s devastating layoffs would have a “substantial and cascading effect” on the development of The Elder Scrolls 6, something Bethesda has denied. Job losses across Bethesda Game Studios locations included “key, high-performing people in the trenches” building the company’s long-awaited Skyrim successor, impacting morale and raising the risk of future development crunch and delays, we were told.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
