The references being used by a Bethesda artist seem to confirm rumours of where Elder Scrolls 6 is set, as they hurriedly block their Pinterest account.
No long after his interest in gardening led to the creation of the Pikmin franchise, Nintendo luminary Shigeru Miyamoto was supposedly forbidden from talking about his hobbies in public, lest he give away clues about a future game.
It’s a sensible precaution too, as fans often go to great lengths trying to discover secrets about upcoming releases, like the time they started tracking international shipping manifests to try and learn more about the Switch 2.
It’s by no means just Nintendo fans though, as fans of The Elder Scrolls seem to have found some very clear evidence of where the upcoming new game is set, based on the references a Bethesda Game Studios artist has been pinning on Pinterest.
Once the artist realised people were watching them, they quickly locked the account and set it to private, which only underlines the fact that the images they were highlighting gave a massive clue as to what they were working on.
According to fans on Reddit, the artist’s account was originally a mix of sci-fi and fantasy imagery, with the former slowly disappearing from their feed over time – implying that they were working on Starfield but had more recently moved onto The Elder Scrolls 6.
The most recent images, before the account was made private, included African-looking clothing and weapons, and a number of different male models of African descent. This was in addition to various desert and jungle settings, as well as underwater photography of shoals of fish.
Fans of Elder Scrolls will know exactly what that implies: the fictional country of Hammerfell, home to the Redguard. The Redguard have been a part of The Elder Scrolls since the beginning and have always been depicted as dark skinned, with Hammerfell’s varied landscapes an analogue for Africa.
Each new mainline entry in The Elder Scrolls series is set in, and named after, an existing area of the fictional world of Tamriel and as long ago as 2020 Hammerfell, and the neighbouring High Rock, have been rumoured as the setting for the new game.
There’s been no evidence for that up till now though, and previous rumours may have simply been based on the fact that Hammerfell is one of the few large countries not to get its own game yet.
It did come close though, with 1998 action adventure spin-off The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard. Unfortunately though both it and fellow spin-off Battlespire were major flops and were quickly forgotten.
Although the images aren’t definitive proof, it now seems very like that the new game will be called The Elder Scrolls 6: Hammerfell. Although it remains a mystery as to when it will be released or properly unveiled.
The only other common rumour is that the game will encompass the whole of Tamriel, but that seems unlikely given the amount of work that would involve and the fact that The Elder Scrolls Online already exists.
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