We just got the official title reveal for The Elder Scrolls VI: Sentinel, breaking nearly ten years of silence since the game was originally teased. While some disappointed fans felt as though a title reveal was a lackluster drop after so much waiting, we can actually gather a lot of information from the hints provided in the teaser, including a surprising implication towards the scale of the game’s playable area.
Videos by ComicBook.com
Not only does a short quote at the end of the teaser reveal vital aspects of the story, but the title, as well as the sand-buried Elder Scroll, reveal that the next entry in the franchise will be in Hammerfell, home of the Redguard, and will likely be based around the capital city of Sentinel. We already know a lot about the city of Sentinel thanks to the importance of the Redguard capital across multiple Elder Scrolls games, and this particular naming convention might suggest that Sentinel itself is the central location to the game, and perhaps the only part of Hammerfell players can explore.
The Name Stands Out From Recent Elder Scrolls Entries
The last four mainline Elder Scrolls games were named after the unique cultural zones in Tamriel they explored. The Elder Scrolls II: High Rock explored High Rock, home of the Bretons, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind explored the majority of Morrowind, the nation of Dark Elves, and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim explored the titular High Kingdom of the nords. Though The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion mostly takes place in the nation of Cyrodill, the game also sees the players exploring the planes of Oblivion, so it isn’t really an exception.
All of these titles see players exploring the entirety, or at least the vast majority of the lands in the title, and all of these titles correspond to one of the seven regions of Tamriel. However, The Elder Scrolls VI isn’t called “Hammerfell,” despite that being the region that the titular Sentinel lies within.
Of course, this could just be a stylistic choice on behalf of Bethesda. The name “Sentinel” means “Guard,” which could be thematically relevant to the game that takes place within Hammerfell not long after the Aldmeri Dominion’s invasion.
However, there is a possibility that the Sentinel in the title refers not to the city, but the nation of the same name that the city resides in. What if The Elder Scrolls VI doesn’t see players traveling across all of Hammerfell, but instead confines them within the borders of one of the region’s many nations?
What This Means For The Scale Of The Game, And All Elder Scrolls Games Moving Forward
Just because The Elder Scrolls VI might be set within the borders of Sentinel doesn’t mean players should worry about the map being smaller.
Oblivion and Skyrim have relatively the same amount of playable space, with Fallout 4 being even larger than Skyrim and Starfield having over a thousand worlds to explore. Bethesda knows that large maps are essential to their open-world games, and they aren’t about to stop just because the thematic scale of The Elder Scrolls VI might be smaller. We can expect the playable space of Sentinel to be around the same size, if not drastically bigger than Skyrim’s map.
In fact, having the game take place within the borders of Sentinel instead of all of Hammerfell actually makes the world of Tamriel feel much bigger.
You can walk from one end of Skyrim’s map to the other in under 30 minutes. As far as the lore of the Elder Scrolls universe goes, the actual playable space is much, much smaller. By making a map of comparable size but having it only depict one state in the larger region, Bethesda effectively makes the world of The Elder Scrolls feel much truer to scale, and thus, more immersive.
Furthermore, choosing to set games within smaller regions allows Bethesda to depict more of the world. As we can see in the zone-to-zone approach employed by The Elder Scrolls Online, different areas within the larger regions can have drastically different environments, cultures, and stories. If Bethesda was going to make a single game for each region, they would only have seven games worth of material before they woudl have to start backtracking.
The very same zone-to-zone structure employed by The Elder Scrolls Online could be the reason why Bethesda would potentially take a thematically smaller approach to the game’s playable space. Years of development on The Elder Scrolls Online may have influenced how Bethesda is approaching The Elder Scrolls VI, and considering the MMORPG’s popularity this isn’t a bad thing.
For everything the teaser for The Elder Scrolls VI revealed, it created just as many questions and unanswered theories. Whatever the map ends up looking like, we can be sure that it will depict the legendary homeland of the Redguard, and hope that Bethesda puts their best foot forward with the latest Elder Scrolls release.
Do you agree with this theory? Would you rather the game be limited to the borders of Sentinel, or would you want to explore all of Hammerfell? Leave your answers in the comments below.
