You know, if this was any other game series, any other game, I would call this ‘name reveal’ a complete nothingburger. But, there is an inherent implication there will at least be buns involved in this burger-of-nothing. Perhaps even a flaccid slice of American cheese. Imagine none of this. Imagine a burger that you think you can smell from the other room, but it’s merely an olfactory hallucination of a time when you were young and every video game had a physical disc. THAT is the legendary 2018 ‘announcement teaser’ for the The Elder Scrolls VI. A yearning for a past that you can never return to. Ahem. Anyways, that was 2018. We’ve had at least two apocalypses since then. So, grading on a curve, this was the most something-burger thus far regarding The Elder Scrolls VI.
The name The Elder Scrolls VI: Sentinel has been on lips for a long time. I’ve heard it tossed around for years. But I will say that the recent ‘reveal’ trailer came flush with information in comparison to its 2018 counterpart. We see Hammerfell, for one thing, with its wide swaths of pale desert front and center in the video. The camera zooms, zooms, and zooms, and then—a swift wind blows aside enough sand to reveal…a f*cking Elder Scroll? Despite the Elder Scrolls being the series’ literal namesake, we don’t see them too terribly often in the modern games. And that’s to say nothing of the quote that followed—
“The scroll offered only a shimmer, a veil thinly lifted to my eyes. A future lost. A victory undone. Sands of time scattered by fate.” —Yazar, Moth Priest of High Queen Iradne of Hammerfell (4E206)
What the F*CK what the F*CK what the F*CK. Now this—this is INFORMATION. This quote is from the 206th year of the fourth era. That’s a mere five years after the end of The Elder Scrolls VI‘s little known predecessor, Skyrim. Trivial compared to the 200 years that passed between Oblivion and Skyrim. Now, just because that’s the year the quote comes from, doesn’t mean that’s the year Sentinel takes place, but conjecture remains all the same.
If the ‘Moth Priest’ bit confuses you, there’s a monastic order known as the Order of the Ancestor Moth. Moth Priests dedicate their lives to the preservation and study of the Elder Scrolls. That’s why the monks are all blind; after years of pouring over the Elder Scrolls, their vision eventually fails them. The Cult of the Ancestor Moth share the knowledge and portents they learn from their rigorous exploration of the Elder Scrolls to help the Empire, whatever form the Empire takes.
Sentinel has enormous shoes to fill, but Bethesda’s never failed to deliver on a mainline Elder Scrolls game, so…knock on wood! Some people are getting overly optimistic, saying we’ll see a gameplay demo in 2027. I’m not the betting kind, but if I was, I wouldn’t count on it. Metaphorically speaking, I’m gonna put my chit in for 2030 as a release year. But I’d love to be proven wrong.