Recently, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma saw a demo of The Elder Scrolls 6 and cryptically suggested the game’s full name will have an eight-character subtitle.
That remains to be seen, but Elder Scrolls fans took the morsel of news and ran with it, offering many theories as to what the game could be called. One possibility is a reference found in Bethesda’s last big game, Starfield.
Fans have suggested subtitles like Dominion, Starfall, Orsinium, Covenant, and, most intriguingly, Sentinel. That’s the name of a city in Hammerfell, a province in the world of The Elder Scrolls, and a top fan theory for where The Elder Scrolls 6 might take place.
As for the connection to Starfield, people on Reddit went back to the game’s character-creator tool and found a 16-digit employee number that, as it turns out, spells “Sentinel” when dividing the numbers into pairs and associating that with letters of the alphabet. This was actually first discovered years ago, but the translation to Sentinel is gaining more steam now.
Right now, these are just fan theories. It’s entirely possible that Sharma’s post with the asterisks meant nothing at all. The Elder Scrolls 6 is indeed likely to have a subtitle, as all previous games in the main series also did. These include The Elder Scrolls: Arena, The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.
The news about The Elder Scrolls 6 comes amidst upheaval at parent company Xbox as part of a “reset” of the business. The layoffs affected Bethesda as well, and studio staff said they fear further delays for The Elder Scrolls 6 and expressed concerns about the “crushing effect on morale” from the layoffs.
When Sharma came to visit the Bethesda offices in Maryland this week, protestors installed a Scabby the rat inflatable and planted fans in the ground for every developer laid off.
The Elder Scrolls 6 is one of multiple new games in the works at Bethesda and its supporting teams. Some of the others include remasters of Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas, while Obsidian is working on some other new Fallout game. Fallout 5 is also in the works.