So when will Elder Scrolls VI be released? Unfortunately for the whole world, the next Elder Scrolls game will not be arriving until 2026 at the earliest. Some people are even predicting 2028 as more realistic.
Which is downright insane.
So we’re all just supposed to keep playing Skyrim the whole time? Just keep screwing around with dragons that talk?
Skyrim was released all the way in November of 2011. So it will have taken Bethesda 15 or more years to make the next installment of Elder Scrolls.
Do you realize how crazy that is? This is not some random game thrown out by some some big company that ultimately nobody cares about…. This is Elder Scrolls! Elder Scrolls is a cult classic with people still playing Morrowind despite it being released all the way back in 2002. Which means people will be playing a 24 year old game still when the next installment of Elder Scrolls comes out. Again, that’s crazy.
So if I live to be 88 then one quarter of my entire life will have been spent playing Morrowind. And lets just say one sixth of my entire life would’ve been spent waiting for Elder Scrolls VI.
Bethesda needs to pull themselves together. Morrowind is thought to be one of the best games ever made and is still loved by many. Why on earth would you spend at least 15 years to make a new game that could top a masterpiece?
Elder Scrolls should have been a permanent priority for Bethesda and not taken a back seat to other games. In a sense it should’ve been like the Star Wars franchise, somebody somewhere should’ve always been working on the next story.
I mean Skyrim is certainly a good game but it lacks a little bit of the “free wheeling” feeling you get from Morrowind. There are more triggers for events in Skyrim, accidentally forcing you into paths. I just don’t think Skyrim is aging as well as Morrowind because of those triggers. And can we just agree that being constantly attacked by dragons is a bit annoying? How many dragons do we really need?
Anyway, Elder Scrolls VI may take place in Hammerfell, home of the Redguards. It’s thought to be Hammerfell because of where candles were placed on a map in a promotional release by the Elder Scrolls X account. But in truth Bethesda could just say screw it and do Morrowind II. There’s nothing really stopping them from changing things around.
Hammerfell will be interesting though!
The Redguards are a race of men who hail from the lost continent of Yokuda and now reside primarily in the province of Hammerfell. While officially Yokudans, they acquired their current name through the corruption of the native Yokudan term “Ra Gada,” which (loosely translated) means “warrior wave.” Due to their swift and decisive conquest of Hammerfell, the Redguards are renowned as the most naturally gifted warriors in Tamriel.[1] Their ferocity and versatility is also manifested in their personality, which lends itself to why they are most effective as scouts and in small units as opposed to being deployed as rank and file soldiers.[2][3] They are masterful smiths, and are capable of making armor out of enchanted porcelain
Redguards have a diverse history and Hammerfell has diverse environments from jungles to desert. It sounds more similar to Morrowind in that regard than to Skyrim or Oblivion. I imagine we’ll have a great deal of anti imperialism / imperialism conflict inside the game. Supposedly Michael Kirkbride’s writings on the Redguard focused on / were inspired by the Black Panthers and the idea of reverse / black imperialism.
So my bet is that Hammerfell will play more like Morrowind than like Oblivion. And I’m betting we’re going to see some pretty high end graphics and technology involved with this game. Just like with how Morrowind was impressive graphics wise for the time it was released I can’t help but imagine Hammerfell will be too.
God only knows how powerful of a graphics card you’ll need to play at max settings. Actually, god only knows how powerful graphics cards really will be two to four years from now. We may be talking about a normal amount of memory being 64GB and the card having 40,000 CUDA cores. We may even be talking about 64GB of regular memory starting to be normalized in the average desktop by then. We’re currently at 16GB and working up to 32GB… so you can see how we could work up to 64GB by release time. Two years isn’t exactly huge but four years is certainly enough time to change up our technical specs.
Okay anyway to wrap things up…
- The current reality is that Hammerfell will be released in the 2026 to 2028 timeframe.
- It will probably feature a lot of Redguard history and conflict, with other races taking a back seat.
- The game will play more like Morrowind in that the environments will be more diverse.
- Like Morrowind, Hammerfell will push graphics / technology for its timeframe. You’re going to need a good graphics card.
- We’ve all been waiting a long time for this game.
I guess it’s time to get back to playing Skyrim.