Where were you in June of 2018? I was at E3. More specifically, I was crammed into a hotel room with about four other then-colleagues from Twinfinite as we huddled around a TV watching the Xbox showcase. We all had laptops on our laps, covering the news from the showcase and waiting with bated breath as Bethesda showed off the new Elder Scrolls game. As you may remember, all we ended up getting was a nothingburger trailer with some trees or something, followed by the title The Elder Scrolls VI. Well, eight years later, we’ve finally learned that it will be called The Elder Scrolls VI: Sentinel.
And here’s a new trailer that also shows off absolutely nothing, aside from the title itself.
Now don’t get me wrong. I’m excited to hear more about The Elder Scrolls VI: Sentinel. I loved Skyrim, was a little lukewarm on Oblivion, but I find Bethesda’s open-world RPGs to be very comfort food-y. It’s great to see Bethesda talking a bit more about this game, though Bethesda has also made sure to temper expectations by stating that development continues on this game, but it’ll “be some time before we’re ready to share more”.
New Xbox CEO Asha Sharma had tweeted a while back that she was already seeing live playthroughs of the game, which suggests that Sentinel is chugging along nicely. In the overall timeline, though, it’s a bit silly to think that this game was announced a whole eight years ago, with nary a peep about it until now, where we’re only getting a title reveal.
But if you recall, 2018 was also the year that Fallout 76 was released, and we all know how that went down. If memory serves, I think that was also the year that The Elder Scrolls: Blades was announced. That was a pretty horrendous mobile game, and of course that went over well with audiences too. The Elder Scrolls VI was likely revealed then as a way to reassure fans that Bethesda was still working on its mainline series. Great strategy?
