If you thought GTA 6 fans were conspiratorial, then take a look at the followers of The Elder Scrolls. In the 15 years since the release of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, fans have been desperate to know the name of the endlessly late sixth entry in the legendary RPG series. That fervor has reached a new peak since Xbox’s new boss, Asha Sharma, posted on X on Tuesday to say she’d pushed past the giant rat to play the new game and found the “scale and grandeur” to be “incredible.” But in doing so, she referred to it as “The Elder Scrolls VI: ********.”
EIGHT ASTERISKS?! What could it mean?! Almost certainly not that the boss lady just held her fingers down on Shift-8 for a short burst and clicked send. How could it possibly be that? It was surely the first stage in an elaborate series of clues, an ARG perhaps, that would lead us to the game’s true identity. (To be fair, a little more fuel was poured on by Bethesda’s X account replying with the same number of asterisks.)
Live playthrough of The Elder Scrolls VI: ******** this morning. The scale and grandeur are incredible. The story is even greater.
— ASHA (@asha_shar) August 11, 2026
The leading theory, as reported by IGN, is The Elder Scrolls VI: Sentinel. Why? Because that’s eight letters, and Sentinel is a major Redguard city in the region of Hammerfell that has, for a while, been believed to be the game’s setting. But also eight letters are Dominion, Balfiera, Orsinium…
So step in an even more splendidly spurious suggestion: What if Bethesda’s Starfield had told us it was called Sentinel multiple years ago?! Once again it’s IGN that brings us the theory, whereby the character’s ARGOS employee number in Starfield‘s character creation section spells out a coded form of SENTINEL.
Look, that’s an awfully big coincidence if the number weren’t chosen to deliberately spell out the word. But it could just be a thing for Starfield, right? There’s nothing about it that would suggest it’s pointing to another game in another universe. But there’s also no questioning that Sentinel is a major port city of Hammerfell, and it’d make a cool name for the game. Heck, it made for one of the most evocative names for a game ever when Geoff Crammond used it in 1990.
But it gets a touch more convincing when, as IGN observes, former Bethesda developer Michael Kirkbride replied to a post on Reddit about all this with a “Yep,” as if confirming “Sentinel” as correct.
I have a confession to make. For the last 15-ish years I have been trying to seed the idea that the next Elder Scrolls game is titled Hammerfell by using the name as if already announced in articles across multiple websites and magazines. Why? Because Bethesda permanently blacklisted my old website because I pointed out Elder Scrolls Online‘s beta was a bit crap, and I thought that if I’d guessed right and kept just stating it as if it were definitely right, it would occasionally cause someone to have a small panic, maybe make some frantic phone calls. I’m very petty.
I’ve been doing it on this very website! Multiple times! I was doing it a decade back on Rock Paper Shotgun. So many times! I’m pretty sure I got it printed in PC Gamer too, and I’ll definitely have at least tried to get it onto Polygon and The Escapist. So if these new theories are at all accurate, it’s nice to think I’d at least guessed the correct region, and I bet my ass it was the working title at one point—importantly (for my ego) many years before Hammerfell became the prevailing belief of the game’s setting.
I guess I’ll have to stop doing that now I’ve acknowledged it. Anyway, The Elder Scrolls VI: Hammerfell is still thought to be at least two years away, despite this attempt at a face-saving proof-of-life exercise in the wake of the gruesome firings across Microsoft’s gaming companies.
