Bethesda’s E3 conference this year dropped many exciting bomb shells.
And not just Fallout related ones.
The conference ended off with the news that a 6th Elder Scroll game was in the works.
While Todd Howard, the head of development on Elder Scrolls and Fallout, left us in the
dark about everything minus the game’s existence, we have no idea what stage of development
the game could be in, or where on Tamriel it’ll be set.
Location is key; while we won’t be able to speculate the story, we’ll be able to
gauge a lot about the game depending on the province its set.
Before we begin speculating, let’s run through a very brief summary of the world of Elder
Scrolls.
It’s a pretty massive world with a whole lot of lore, so we’ll do our best to break
it down.
Let’s start big.
The cosmology of Elder Scrolls focuses on Mundus, the plane of the mortals.
Nirn is a planet within Mundus, where most of the games take place.
Tamriel is the main continent on Nirn, and it has nine provinces.
These are Cyrodiil, Skyrim, Morrowind, Black Marsh, Elsweyr, Hammerfell, High Rock, Summerset
Isle and Valenwood.
So, what’s Oblivion then?
Well, it’s a void, the realm of the Daedra.
Oblivious contains 16 planes, each ruled by a different Daedric prince.
There are a lot of other planes, too, but we won’t dive into those for now.
Let’s break down those provinces though.
Cyrodiil is where the Imperial City is located, and is often considered to be the cradle of
human imperial high culture in all of Tamriel, being the center of the Empire.
It’s the largest province, and it’s a massive jungle, but it’s also a wealthy
and powerful nation, too.
Skyrim, known as the Old Kingdom, was the first region of Tamriel settled by humans
from the continent of Atmora; hardy, brave, warriors known as the Nords.
It’s where the last Elder Scrolls game was set, and featured many a high snowy mountain,
and a whole lot of dragons.
Morrowind is the homeland of the Dunmer people, who are dark skinned elves, and a highly intelligent,
aloof and reserved race, who often carry distrust for other races, seeing themselves as superior.
Half of Morrowind is the island of Vvardenfell, which is encircled by the inner sea, and has
a massive volcano on it.
Most of the population of Morrowind live on the west and southwest coast.
Black Marsh’s native population is the Argonians, who are essentially lizard people.
There are few roads; rather, most travel is done by boat, with the inland filled with
water ways and impenetrable swamps.
The Dunmer peoples of Morrowind have raided Black Marsh for slaves for ages, although
now the Empire has made slavery illegal, it often still persists, resulting in both races
harbouring a hatred towards one another.
Elsweyr is the home of the Khajiit, a race of anthropomorphic cat people.
The southern parts of the province are filled with jungles and city dwellers with ancient
mercantile traditions, whereas in the north, the Khajiit are nomadic, and much more aggressive
and territorial, united under tribal warlords.
Hammerfell is an urban, maritime province, with their primary race being the Redguard.
They’re typically depicted as sailors, mercenaries and adventurers, and they’re a people who
love travel.
It’s also got a lot of desert on its mainland.
High Rock consists of many clans who are fiercely independent, but their language, bardic traditions
and heroic legends unify them.
It’s also home to the Orcish kingdom.
Summerset Isle is filled with green land.
It’s got fertile farmalnds, woodland parks and a whole lot of ancient structures.
Settlements are small, and dominated by ruling seats of local warlords or wizards.
The natives also tend to be unwelcoming to foreigners.
It’s home to the High Elves, and some people saw the significant of Thalmor in Skyrim as
foreshadowing that it would be the location of the next major title in the franchise.
Valenwood is fairly uninhabited, with the majority of it being filled with wild rainforests,
and its coasts are filled with swamps and tropical rainforests.
As you can imagine, the area gets a lot of heavy rainfall, and the settlements that do
reside there are far and few between.
It’s also got an extensive history and lore considering it’s the homeland of the Elves.
The first Elder Scrolls, Arena, was set all over Tamriel, with randomly generated locations
across the continent.
Elder Scrolls 2 was Daggerfall, which took place in High Rock and Hammerfell.
The 3rd major title is set in Morrowind, in Vvardenfell, and the 4th title, Oblivion,
takes place in Cyrodill, and some parts of the Oblivion realms.
In between the main titles, there have been a few smaller games, including Elder Scrolls
Legend: Battlespire, Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard, Elder Scrolls Travels Stormhold,Dawnstar
and Shadowkey.
And then, of course, we have Elder Scrolls Online.
Battlespire takes place in between Oblivion and Battlespire, which is a place between
Mundus and Oblivion.
Redguard takes place on an island in Hammerfell.
Stormhold takes place in a city in Black Marsh, Dawnstar is located in Skyrim, which returned
in the Skyrim game.
Shadowkey visited parts of High Rock, Hammerfell and Skyrim, and Online takes place all across
Tamriel.
With all of that considered, the places in Tamriel that haven’t been used in a major
Elder Scrolls game yet, minus Elder Scrolls Online, are Elsweyr, Valenwood and the Summerset
Isles.
That being said, most of Black Marsh, the mainland of Morrowind and a very large chunk
of Hammerfell and High Rock have also not been explored.
So where does this leave us?
Summerset Isle, while it’s just been added to the Elder Scrolls Online game, seems like
a good fit, but it’s considerably smaller than Skyrim or Cyrodill.
Franchises tend to give us bigger maps compared to smaller ones as they progress.
Hammerfell would provide a substantial map, as would Black Marsh, while Valenwood and
Elsweyr are pretty small.
Well, let’s take a look at that teaser trailer.
Geographically, we’re looking at a province that has rocky plains, and looks like it has
quite a lot of vegetation around its coast.
If this trailer is any sort of hint, we’re definitely not looking at Black Marsh or Valenwood.
And we definitely won’t see another main game in the provinces we’ve already visited
in the major titles.
Summerset Isle could potentially fit, but it seems like a bit of a stretch considering
the majority of its terrain is so green and lush.
Elsweyr would fit the geography, but what are the chances that the game would focus
on a territory whose natives are cat people?
I mean, personally, I’d love to hang out with the Khajiit some more, but it doesn’t
seem overly likely.
Leon Hurly, the senior channel editor at GamesRadar, speculated on his twitter that the game would
take place on High Rock, but noted that the coast line that was featured in the trailer
looked a lot like the lost island of Yokuda, which is west of High Rock and Hammerfell.
Another theory is that the game could take place across the entire continent.
Todd Howard had stated that the next game’s contents will be so advanced that they don’t
have the possible tools to build it yet.
Could this be referring to a game that is so massive in size that Bethesda is still
working out a lot of the logistics on how to develop it?
For now, we’re in the dark.
But we do know that Elder Scrolls 6 is quite the ways away.
The game may be in the pre-production stages, but it won’t be released until after Bethesda’s
other new IP Starfield is released.
Back in 2017, we were told that another Elder Scrolls title wouldn’t be in the works until
two other major multiplatform releases were out, which we now know is Fallout 76 and Starfield.
So it seems likely sometime after 2020 would fit the bill.
There we have it friends!
What are your theories?
Give us a shout in those comments below!
If you dug this video, please show us some love and hit that like button, and if you’d
like more gaming content, subscribe to our channel to keep up to date on all things news,
updates, highlights, lists and more.
Thanks for watching!