Fans are convinced the Starfield trailer reveals The Elder Scrolls 6 location

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A strangely shaped scratch on the spaceship's console could be—possibly, maybe—shaped like a region in Tamriel.

Starfield
(Image credit: Bethesda)

We've already dipped into some of the finer details of the Starfield teaser trailer that premiered today at the Microsoft & Bethesda E3 showcase. And there are plenty of little clues in the trailer that could tell us more about Starfield, which is planned for a release in November of 2022.

But an eagle-eyed fan on Reddit noticed one tiny detail that might point to Bethesda's other upcoming RPG, The Elder Scrolls 6, which didn't get teased or even mentioned at today's showcase (contrary to what some dope predicted).

As the pilot in the trailer sits down and begins readying for takeoff, your eyes may have been misdirected by their busy gloved hands flipping switches on their futuristic console. But you should have been ignoring all the lights and buttons and focusing on the far right of the screen, the edge of the console, where there's a strangely-shaped scratch in the white paint, just above the handrail and below the bolt:

Okay, you still can't see it so great there, but let's amateurishly enlarge a single frame in Photoshop:

(Image credit: Bethesda)

It's a very unusual scratch, to put it lightly, and one that you'd think would have to be deliberately made by an artist who worked on modeling the ship's console. But what shape is that?

Well, there's plenty of speculation that the scratch is shaped like Iliac Bay, a body of water between High Rock and Hammerfell in The Elder Scrolls which is sometimes called Starfall Bay. 

Starfall? Starfield? It all makes sense.

Well, maybe, possibly, it all makes sense. Let's take a look at the scratch next to a map of Iliac Bay from The Elder Scrolls unofficial wiki.

(Image credit: Bethesda)

I mean... sorta kinda? I can definitely see the bay, and the shape of the land around it is pretty similar. At the same time it feels like a stretch. People are fooling themselves if they think this is how Bethesda wants to tell us where The Elder Scrolls 6 takes place, with a scratch on a spaceship.

But then I keep remembering that scratches don't appear on things in video games unless an artist puts them there, and it's a weird scratch to doodle up without having a reason. High Rock and Hammerfell are already theorized to be potential locations of The Elder Scrolls 6. Maybe the scratch is telling us something.

Nah, it's just a scratch. Drawn specifically by someone. For a reason. It's the bay! Or... it's not. Because that would be a stretch. But then... Maybe.

Thanks, IGN.

Christopher Livingston
Christopher Livingston
Senior Editor

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.