The Elder Scrolls franchise has long been Bethesda Softworks‘ flagship game series. The fifth entry, Skyrim, remains among the best-selling video games of all time. Production for The Elder Scrolls 6 started back in 2018, and since then, development updates have been sparse, to say the least. With Bethesda keeping quiet, fans have been left to make educated guesses on where the next installment could be set.
Every previous game in the series has taken place on the continent of Tamriel. But Tamriel is simply one part of Nirn, the planet on which The Elder Scrolls takes place. With so many other continents to explore full of equally rich lore, from the mysterious sunken continent of Yokuda to the strange land of Akavir, The Elder Scrolls has many stories left to tell.
But of course, fans are always eager to see even more of Tamriel. There are many areas that, outside The Elder Scrolls: Arena and The Elder Scrolls: Online, players have never been given the chance to fully explore, from the living forests of Valenwood to the psychedelic swamps of Black Marsh.
Daggerfall
There have only been two official clues as to the location of the next game. First was a 2018 teaser, in which a landscape was revealed that looked somewhat similar to that of High Rock. This was bolstered in December 2020, when the Elder Scrolls Twitter account posted an image of the now-familiar setting of Skyrim with an unmapped Hammerfell bordering it, with the caption “Transcribe the past and map the future.” These clues have led many to place bets on the Hammerfell and High Rock region being the setting of the new game — namely the Iliac Bay, where The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall took place all the way back in 1996 — and was rendered in actual size.
And in the Starfield trailer from last November, eagle-eyed viewers spotted an engraving eerily similar to the Iliac Bay map located on the side of a pilot-operated console.
If Bethesda does choose to return to the Iliac Bay, they’ll have great scope for visual creative license, as graphics have come a long way in the last 27 years — not to mention the fact that the Elder Scrolls timeline, as of Skyrim, is now two centuries ahead of Daggerfall.
In an interview with IGN, project leader Todd Howard told fans not to hold their breath, saying, “Everything takes longer than we would like… but we want to make sure that we get it right.” A release date for ES:6 is uncertain, but many in the industry are predicting no earlier than 2025.
Starfield is coming out this September, and Bethesda appears to have had its hands full with its new sci-fi epic. But with the schedule seemingly clear after that, Bethesda is sure to get to work on the next entry in their most beloved franchise.