Xbox CEO Asha Sharma recently sat through a TES VI “live playthrough” session, finding its scale “incredible”. Her cryptic X post about it, however, has the community focusing on something else: the full title. With eight asterisks after “The Elder Scrolls VI”, the post may or may not be a hint at what the second bit will be called.

Crucially, if the asterisks are indeed a hint of how many letters there are, it doesn’t fit “Hammerfell”, the most widely theorized title.

As community theorizes TES VI subtitle, Asha Sharma’s post also establishes big dev milestone

Long-time Elder Scrolls followers are currently reading into the fine print of the asterisks to deduce what the title could be. Since Hammerfell is out, the going theory that I personally find the coolest is TES VI: Sentinel, which would sort of fit the naming pattern of TES II: Daggerfall as a synecdoche to High Rock.

Other ideas being thrown around include the two-word options: High Rock, Skyrim II, Iliac Bay itself, or even Redguard (encore).

Indeed, with the complete lack of any official information, these morsels are all we have to go by. The fact that it’s going to be south of Iliac Bay at all is speculation based on the only trailer all those years ago in E3 2018 (and some unverifiable leaks afterwards).

Asha Sharma’s post today, too, is only another trail of breadcrumbs that may lead nowhere. For all we know, it’s just a random number of asterisks to classify the title. Or, perhaps, to reclaim some mystique lost with Bethesda’s sudden roadmap transparency.

The bigger redguard fish to fry in this tweet is the fact that a “live playthrough” of an internal build of TES VI was presented to the big boss. This is only the second-ever direct quote from an Xbox C-suite about watching some gameplay.

A few weeks ago, Xbox exec Matt Booty confirmed in a Variety interview that TES VI is “coming along well”, having seen the game in action up front. Today’s tweet is marginally more pointed, broaching the subject of scale.

Elder Scrolls has progressively become bigger from Morrowind to Oblivion to Skyrim. It’s most likely owing to the waning hardware constrictions with each era, but the enigmatic Elder Scrolls VI will doubtless be another step of this increment.

Back to the more important topic, though: it’s a vertical slice in all likelihood, and the game is far from its final leg. It’s only been three years in production after all. Still, a direct X post from the Xbox CEO herself presents a big milestone.

If not indicative of its actual production stage, it’s at least a vote of confidence. With much restructuring and studio-cuts to narrow their portfolio, Xbox has recently put more money into accelerating the development of Fallout and Elder Scrolls projects.

One of Bethesda’s flagship titles, the game has more wind on its sails than past years, and we might even get to see a second (and a real) trailer this TGA. Meantime, all the wind we get is wild gusts of TES VI rumor floating on hopes and dreams.