Bethesda just revealed a small teaser about the next Elder Scrolls game.
At the end of Bethesda’s press conference good old Todd Howard has just announced our games for next year and then just when we thought it was over he shows us the Elder Scrolls 6 announcement trailer.
Let’s take a look before we analyze:
“we have spent years thinking about and working on something we feel uniquely positioned to pull off and that we’re incredibly excited about, but we’re also building toward the game after that and it’s the one you keep asking about”
Funny how Bethesda said the elder scrolls six was not even in development.
They also said the same thing about Fallout 76 and Fallout 4 as well, so firstly when is this coming out?
Well, currently it has no release date and as Todd Howard said at the conference, Starfield will be coming out next year and the Elder Scrolls six after, so in my opinion I would be extremely surprised if Bethesda released 2 AAA flagship titles in the same year at the same time.
So, it’s a given that star field will be out around November next year in 2019 and then the Elder Scrolls 6 will be out earliest 2020 again around November time, and I don’t think Bethesda would want their renowned Elder Scrolls getting in the way of their new title — Starfield.
With that in mind let’s take a closer look at the trailer because the landscape shown here gives us an indication as to where the game is going to be based and from that we can glean a few interesting things about it.
We can see it’s a very distinctive barren landscape with rocky peaks and immediately my mind leaps to the province of High Rock or Hammerfell, but most likely high rock for the reasons I’m about to give you:
A distinctive part of the landscape is the coastline with rocks rising up into the sky and High Rock has a huge coastline, and I’m sure you’ve noticed the mist within the trailer and obviously, mist is reminiscent of coastal areas.
The crater on the left-hand side near the castle could in fact be the landmark known ascrossing which lays in between the board of Hammerfell and High Rock, so it could actually be either of the regions where the Elder Scrolls 6 is based.
It may even be possible that the game encompasses both regions in one game, though I would be extremely surprised if Bethesda did that.
One more detail though is that if you recall Morrowind title was written in gold, Oblivion’s was written in the oblivion gate rock, and Skyrim’s was written in steel. This title however looks a little like bronze or brass, a rather primitive material, in comparison this could even indicate that the game is based early on in the elder scrolls timeline when compared to the other Elder Scrolls games already released.
The interesting thing about High Rock though is the most northwestern region of Tamriel and its populated mainly by Breton’s known for being powerful mages, to the east of high rock is Skyrim and in terms of high rocks environments you will likely find a busy trade route near Daggerfall that passes in between the Iliac bay.
The land of Highrock is windswept and barren apart from its rocky peaks and some scattered settlements depending on when the game is placed.
You’ll find many fortifications or abandoned castles of Forgotten laws and petty kings of previous eras, we can actually see what looks like a stone castle typical of high rock in the trailer.
I’ve read in books about high rock in the Elder Scrolls games that if you’ve seen a couple of high rock villages you’ve seen them all, interestingly though High Rock is one of the few two provinces that do not share a border with Cyrodiil, this means that the Empire may have a very limited presence here within the game and it would actually be really interesting to delve into the complex stories of Breton politics.
As for the sub regions of High Rock though despite what we see in the trailer it’s actually quite diverse and you know this if you’ve played the Elder Scrolls online for example, we have Glen Umbra the most western region of High Rock near the iliac Bay and of course home to Daggerfall, this area is rather lost with rolling hills forests to the south which were also home to several which covens, has even a marsh to the southeast of the forest.
The landscape is pretty much just dead and barren and the air is seen a lot of bloodshed over the years, in fact, it’s most distinctive feature is the past that has a fortified garrison which actually serves as protection against the Raiders from Hammerfell.
We then have Hrothgar near the borders of Skyrim, the terrain is obviously going to be very mountainous and it’s home to many orc strongholds and ruins, there was a whole separate DLC about the city in the Elder Scrolls online, so I’m not so sure how pivotal it will be in the Elder Scrolls 6, but there’s definitely a lot of room to expand on the lore of this city.
And finally we have Bettany which is a heavily forested area and home to these stone toothed orcs who renamed it, so depending on when the game takes place it could be either names.
I’m not going to fully cover Hammerfell because I’m kind of confident that the games based in High Rock, maybe I’ll do another more in-depth article about both provinces.
Hammerfell is a much bigger province, it’s got a desert, it’s also the home to the Red Guards but the Dwemer did in fact once occupy Hammerfell, so it’s got a very interesting history as well.
Originally published at Lonely Dark World.
