Good news for the Bethesda RPG-starved: The Elder Scrolls 6 is significantly more corporeal now than it was eight years ago, when Todd Howard appeared at E3 (RIP) to announce it with nothing but a logo, a mountain range, and some rousing music. A couple months after Xbox CCO Matt Booty said the game “looks amazing,” CEO Asha Sharma went to Bethesda to watch a “live playthrough” that she has now called “incredible.”
This praise may come as a shock to the approximately zero people who expected the head of Xbox to publicly say the publisher’s one guaranteed upcoming blockbuster looked like doggy doo doo. (Xbox’s CEO also notably did not address the hundreds of flags placed outside the office by the Bethesda Game Studios union, each representing a worker from the studio laid off in Xbox’s recent, brutal cuts).
Sharma praised the “scale and grandeur” but said “the story is even greater,” which feels like a borderline preposterous statement to make after a brief live demo of an RPG destined to be dozens of hours long. Her tweet offers no actual new information about the game, but does reaffirm that the head of Xbox is going to rizz up Xbox games whenever the opportunity arises.
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Live playthrough of The Elder Scrolls VI: ******** this morning. The scale and grandeur are incredible. The story is even greater.August 11, 2026
But wait… does her tweet actually contain a tiny scrap of new information about The Elder Scrolls 6? That depends on what you make of the eight asterisks that follow the name and colon. Do they merely symbolize a placeholder for the title, or do they represent a cryptic clue that whatever the game’s subtitle is, it’s exactly eight letters?
PC Gamer’s Elder Scrolls loremaster Jody Macgregor took his best guess as to where TES6 will be located back in 2018, with High Rock and Hammerfell the two leading theories. With those in mind, we’ve got a few of our best guesses at the title in a poll for your approval.
If you’re not up on your Elder Scrolls lore, allow Jody to explain the meaning behind a few of these candidates:
- Dominion: The Aldmeri Dominion was heavily foreshadowed as a future threat in Skyrim, and the name Dominion nicely mirrors Oblivion.
- Sentinel: The rumored codename for The Elder Scrolls 6 is Guardian, a synonym for the name of this city (capital of a kingdom of the same name) on The Iliac Bay.
- High Rock: As teased in Starfield, a strong candidate for TES6’s setting.
- Redguard: While already used as the subtitle of a spinoff, the name of the people who inhabit the area it’s set in would fit here as well.
- Evermore: A city in High Rock close to the border of Hammerfell, it would make a convenient starting location and its name sounds cool.
- Balfiera: These islands in the Iliac Bay might be part of The Elder Scrolls 6, but as a videogame name it doesn’t look great on the page.
That’s all we’ve got until the next cryptic clue comes down the pike. If you’ve got your own idea, let us know below.