Elder Scrolls 6: Sentinel Trailer — What We Saw (and Didn’t)
Elder Scrolls 6: Sentinel Trailer: We saw a scroll. We’ve never seen a scroll in an Elder SCROLLS game. Truly next gen.
Bethesda dropped a new Elder Scrolls 6 trailer this week and, to be fair, it exists. That’s the nicest thing either of us has said about it, so consider it a rock-solid start.
Awkward had the news first and warned Elfish it was basically just a title card. Elfish watched it anyway, figuring “basically” was doing some heavy lifting. It wasn’t. It was literally just the title card.
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What We Actually Got
The teaser runs nearly a minute and confirms the official name: The Elder Scrolls 6: Sentinel. The title came out in a video message from Todd Howard celebrating Bethesda Game Studios’ 40th anniversary. Then it’s just sand, a scroll pops out of it, the title shows up, and a quote from some character tied to that scroll closes it out. The setting appears to be Hammerfell, which fans have been guessing for years, so no big shock there.
No gameplay. No cutscene. Not even concept art, which feels like the bare minimum they should have given us at this point. We’d have happily taken a loose sketch, a super artsy one, anything that says “someone drew something.” Honestly, even a peek at the city of Sentinel would’ve counted as proof of life.
What we got instead was a scroll. A scroll! We’ve never seen a scroll in any of the other Elder Scrolls games, so it’s absolutely incredible to see tech like that finally implemented. New era, some would say. (Obvious heavy sarcasm)
The Reddit Reaction
Reddit’s annoyed too. Most of the comments are basically what we’d already said in our group chat, which is either validating or proof we’re the average Reddit user. Favorite one so far: it took them 15 years to come up with a title.
Awkward’s defense: hey hey, choosing a name is hard work. Elfish agreed. He could never.
So When Does It Come Out?
Still no release date, still no platforms, still nothing. Awkward’s hopeful take is that they’ve been quietly working on it since around 2017, full time since 2023, and that Xbox pulled other studios in this past year to speed Bethesda up. Several Microsoft-owned studios are reportedly helping with tech and tools. His understanding is that the goal is to get Bethesda games out before the end of the 2027 financial cycle. We couldn’t find where he saw that, so it’s his read, not a promise
(jk — Awkward_Rock is officially promising a Bethesda game by EOY 2027. He’s saying he is going to make it happen one way or another. Even if that means driving the 45 minutes from his apartment to the Bethesda Studio building and screaming let me in)
soon to be Awkward_Rock
Elfish isn’t buying it. “Working on it passively” could mean one dude doing two hours of concept art a week, which is technically work and gets you exactly as far as “this is indeed an Elder Scrolls game, with characters.” And the full throttle announcement only came this summer, so realistically we’re talking a handful of months.
Where we both land is two years minimum. Awkward’s test is simple: if Bethesda shows up at the VGAs next month, 2027 is on the table, and if they don’t, we’re way out. A 2027 release would be either neat or hella concerning, and Elfish has a feeling it’s gonna be crap crap if released in ’27. For what it’s worth, Todd Howard said last year he had his fingers crossed for GTA 6 to come first, which is not a release date but… we guess it’s something? (We still hope GTA VI fails horribly)
The Starfield Hold-Over Theory
Awkward thinks he maybe kinda sorta saw somewhere that Todd said Starfield dropped when it did because The Elder Scrolls Online and Fallout 76 would keep those two fanbases fed long enough for Starfield to shine. Neither of us could find it again, so call it a rumor with good vibes. If it’s true, then ESO and Starfield are the reason for the 15-year wait, which is the longest gap between game sequels in their whole library.
Elfish cannot get over the logic. Imagine thinking a half-baked game in a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT genre would hold fans over. That’s like dropping a sci-fi movie so nobody asks about your knights-and-dragons sequel: “hey, my audience will be intact because my sci-fi movie came out.” Fuckin weirdos. Next thing you know it’s “we released a new Alien vs. Predator, so we don’t need to make a Lord of the Rings sequel” (yes, we know they were two different studios). Awkward jokingly countered that Starfield has that ~Bethesda touch~, the same way Westworld and Game of Thrones scratched the same itch. Elfish, dripping with sarcasm, agreed that it makes total sense and that this has always worked out perfectly.
We don’t hate them for trying a new IP, they just could’ve done better with it. Starfield felt about half built when it shipped, leaned way too hard on players making their own stories, and had an insane amount of glitches (we’re both too lazy to look up the exact count).
The Hype Problem
Fifteen years of hype is a lot to live up to, and a title card, a scroll and a quote isn’t exactly a victory lap. Still, we have a name now, which is more than we had last week. We’ll take it… begrudgingly.
For reference, the Gnome High Council’s most enthusiastic recorded review in 300 years was “satisfactory,” for the 1987 garden ornament surveillance rollout. We’re giving the trailer the same.
Awkward_Rock still thinks 2027 is possible and isn’t taking any of this for granite. Elfishchunk’s expectations are already at bedrock, which he says makes this easier.