Bethesda might be teasing the setting of The Elder Scrolls 6 in a cryptic tweet posted on New Year's Eve. The newest entry in Bethesda's beloved open-world RPG franchise was announced back in 2018. Since that brief teaser video, the company has kept its mouth shut tight concerning any and all information about the new game, leading to widespread speculation on just about every aspect of it. Following the recent purchase of Bethesda by Microsoft, there was some concern that the new game would not be available on PlayStation consoles, but the official PlayStation website seemed to quell these rumors last month.
One of the most popular things to speculate about Elder Scrolls 6 is the question of where the game will take place. The continent of Tamriel hosts several unique and distinct provinces, any one of which would make for an ideal setting for the latest entry in the series. The game's trailer showed a mountainous landscape, and for the past two years, those mountains have been obsessed over by fans eager to find out more about Elder Scrolls 6.
Now it seems they've received a potent hint from none other than Bethesda itself. On New Year's Eve, the company posted a very mysterious tweet to the Elder Scrolls account (courtesy of Game Rant). The tweet invited fans to "Transcribe the past and map the future," and it included a map of the province of Skyrim, recognizable to fans as the setting of the wildly successful Elder Scrolls game of the same name. Fans have picked up on several notable details from the map which might point to the setting of the next game. For instance, one of the three candles on the map is placed over the province of Hammerfell, a potential setting for the new game. Another candle is placed over the city of Solitude, indicating some importance for the region which is backed up by a coin minted with the city's emblem. It's hard to believe that Bethesda would set two games in a row in the province of Skyrim, but since Solitude also serves as the capital of the region, it might have some political importance in the story of Elder Scrolls 6.
Of course there's also a chance that this is a wild goose chase. Bethesda might just be celebrating the New Year by reflecting on one of its most successful games. It's certainly celebrated Skyrim time and time again by rereleasing it on numerous video game consoles. The cryptic nature of this New Year tweet and the open invitation to map the future would seem to contradict this interpretation pretty strongly; if this is just a New Year celebration, it was very poorly worded.
There's a lot of uncertainty about Elder Scrolls 6, and Bethesda has not been forthcoming. It's assured the public that the game will feature the company's biggest engine upgrade in 14 years, but as potentially exciting as that revelation is, it doesn't tell fans when the game will come out, or even what consoles it will actually be on. This New Year tweet doesn't exactly deliver all the information on The Elder Scrolls 6, but at least it gives fans something to puzzle over while they wait for real news.
Source: The Elder Scrolls (via Game Rant)