The Elder Scrolls 6 May Be Called Sentinel — and Bethesda Hid the Clue in Starfield Three Years Ago

Community sleuths think The Elder Scrolls 6 is subtitled Sentinel, and the evidence goes well beyond counting asterisks in an Xbox executive's tweet. A character ID number in Starfield's character creation screen, visible since the game launched in 2023, spells out S-E-N-T-I-N-E-L when you split the digits into pairs and match them to alphabet positions. Posts flagging this Easter egg actually surfaced three years ago but never gained traction — until now.

The asterisk theory started when Xbox boss Asha Sharma posted about playing The Elder Scrolls 6, and fans noticed her tweet contained eight asterisks, matching the letter count of Sentinel exactly. Former Bethesda developer Michael Kirkbride added fuel to the fire by replying "yep" to a Reddit post proposing Sentinel as the title. Two independent threads of evidence pointing at the same word is hard to dismiss as coincidence. Sentinel is a major coastal city in Hammerfell — the northwestern region widely believed to be the setting for the next Elder Scrolls game — and a Redguard cultural hub with deep lore roots in the series.

The speculation has already spiraled outward. Some fans are debating whether Sentinel as a subtitle hints at a dual-province map covering both Hammerfell and High Rock, while others have started theorizing about settings for The Elder Scrolls 7 and 8. None of that is confirmed, but the Hammerfell connection is well-established fan consensus based on a brief landscape shot in the original 2018 teaser trailer. The Elder Scrolls 6 was announced that year and, despite being one of gaming's most anticipated sequels, is reportedly still at least two years from launch.

The news arrives against a difficult backdrop at Bethesda. Staff inflated a giant rat outside the studio during Sharma's visit in protest at the mass layoffs Microsoft carried out last month. Current and former Bethesda employees told IGN those cuts hit "key, high-performing people in the trenches" working on the game, with concerns raised about morale, crunch risk, and potential delays — claims Bethesda has publicly denied. Whether the game is called Sentinel or not, fans may be waiting a long time to find out for certain.