Bethesda Reveals ‘The Elder Scrolls VI: Sentinel,’ Confirms Hammerfell Setting — But Still No Release Date
by uGames Editors
Elder Scrolls VI: Sentinel (Image: Bethesda)
More than eight years after first teasing it, Bethesda has finally given the next Elder Scrolls game a name: The Elder Scrolls VI: Sentinel.
Bethesda unveiled the title Tuesday at the end of a video celebrating its 40th anniversary. The reveal confirmed the game’s long-rumored setting of Hammerfell, but offered no release date, release year or platform details.
The video, narrated by Bethesda Game Studios director Todd Howard, spent most of its runtime looking back at the company’s history, beginning with its first game, the football title Gridiron, before moving through the Elder Scrolls series that made the studio a giant. In the final minute, Howard turned to the question fans have been asking for years.
“You know, everybody’s always asking about Elder Scrolls 6,” Howard said, explaining that the anniversary felt like the right moment to share the game’s official name.
The brief teaser shows an Elder Scroll rising from desert sand, then ends with a quote from Yazar, Moth Priest to High Queen Iradne of Hammerfell, confirming where the game takes place.
Sentinel is a major port city on the Iliac Bay in Hammerfell, the homeland of the Redguards, and one of the province’s key kingdoms. Players last visited the city in 1996’s The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall, making Sentinel the series’ first return to the region in three decades.
Many fans had already guessed the name. It was reported on Oct. 29 that Bethesda would reveal the Sentinel subtitle in November, around the 15th anniversary of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim on Nov. 11. Earlier reports also said the game would explore the history of the Elder Scrolls artifacts themselves, though Bethesda has not confirmed that.
Xbox’s Asha Sharma celebrated the reveal on X, calling Sentinel “the next chapter of The Elder Scrolls.”
The name reveal does not appear to mean the game is close to launch. Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier said following the announcement that Sentinel is still more than two years away from release.
The Elder Scrolls VI was first announced at E3 in June 2018. Bethesda has said it is the studio’s primary development focus and is being built on Creation Engine 3. The studio’s biggest releases this year were the PlayStation 5 version of Starfield and its Terran Armada DLC.
One of the biggest unanswered questions is how Microsoft, which owns Bethesda, will release the game. Forbes‘ Paul Tassi laid out four possibilities: whether Sentinel comes to PlayStation, and whether it launches day one on Xbox Game Pass.
Putting the game on PlayStation would bring major sales from Sony’s large install base but give up a potential Xbox exclusive on the scale of GTA 6. Keeping it off PlayStation while launching it on Game Pass would sacrifice most of those sales for an uncertain boost in subscribers. Skipping a day-one Game Pass launch could frustrate subscribers.
Sharma has previously stressed that Xbox needs to focus on its biggest franchises, and few are bigger than The Elder Scrolls, whose last mainline entry, Skyrim, arrived 15 years ago this month.
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