The Elder Scrolls 6 teased in Skyrim 13th anniversary Bethesda post

Bethesda sent out a rather innocuous tweet last night to celebrate the 13th anniversary of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

The message itself is pretty straightforward, with nothing cryptic or out of place to speak of, simply stating: “Today marks 13 years The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Happy Birthday to a world we still love to get lost in.”

There was an image attached, however, which doesn’t look specifically untoward at first glance.

You have some sweet rolls positioned so that they form the number “13”, a couple of books, a few weapons, four coins and– oh, just in, I’m hearing that The Elder Scrolls community has gone into full crackpot theory overdrive in a bid to piece together some kind of meaning out of all of this.

In a recent post on the r/TESVI subreddit titled “TESV 13th anniversary tweet by Bethesda hints at Hammerfell yet again”, a few users have banded together in a bid to extrapolate some kind of meaning from the tweet.

Take a look at the The Elder Scrolls VI's original reveal trailer below.

“24 sweet rolls represent the 24 months that separate us from TES6. [Nine] is the month, 15 is the day of the release of the official trailer,” began user Grzechoooo.

“[Four] Septims represent the four ways TES6 will be monetised: paid mods, horse armour, paid DLCs and the OST,” they continued. “A bag of coins represents the cost of the game and the computer you'll need to upgrade to play with only the usual amount of bugs.”

Alright, clearly a lot of users are just having a bit of fun with all this, but a few of them do seem to have spotted some genuinely useful information.

“Three corners represent different play styles,” stated user Ezio_clone. “Bottom right has both swords you can get in the Thieves Guild questline (Nightingale Blade and Chillrend). Top right can represent fighters with the hammer, bottom left is mages because of the books and mask.”

User GenericMaleNPC01 also pointed out that the inclusion of the blade Chillrend ties into the incredibly popular theory that The Elder Scrolls 6 will be set in Hammerfell, linking to the Wiki page for the weapon that states, “The sword's first known owner was Valus Odiil, an Imperial adventurer who wandered Tamriel (or at least Hammerfell)”.

Look, none of this is particularly concrete information, but at this point, can you really fault the community for grasping at every single straw they can get their hands on? They announced this game six years ago and we haven’t heard a peep out of Bethesda regarding it since.

Give it another six years folks, I’m sure we’ll get a gameplay trailer by 2030.