The Elder Scrolls 6 Hopefuls Think They've Spotted a Secret Tease

The Elder Scrolls VI fans think they’ve spotted a secret teaser for the upcoming game during a promotional segment at the 2025 Game Awards, but are they merely coping, or is Microsoft genuinely trying to tease something big?

The 2025 Game Awards have been and gone, and, for the eighth year running, The Elder Scrolls VI refused to make an appearance.

To be honest, so much time has passed since the first teaser trailer for the game dropped that it seems as if the community wasn’t really expecting much from Bethesda this time around, but a few hopefuls were, understandably, disappointed that the show featured zero references to the game.

Unless… maybe it did? As spotted by one user over on the r/TESVI subreddit, Microsoft may have made a subtle reference to The Elder Scrolls VI during a promotional live-action Xbox video that was featured during the Game Awards stream.

As you can see for yourself in the image below, what appears to be the Roman numbers “VI” can be spotted during the promo video (which you can watch for yourself here).

I hope you've got your reading glasses on for this one

Now, there are a couple of issues with this theory, but the most straightforward one is… that might not be the Roman numerals for VI. It’s kind of hard to see in the image in the post on Reddit, but if you load the Game Awards stream in 4K, it looks a hell of a lot more like “V1” to me.

The other, less compelling issue is that even if it is “VI”, that might not even be in reference to The Elder Scrolls VI.

In case you forgot, there’s this other game coming out soon (maybe) from the small indie developer Rockstar Games called Grand Theft Auto VI.

Personally, I think it’s more likely that (if it is VI, and not V1) it’s actually referring to The Elder Scrolls VI. While there are a bunch of non-Microsoft published games featured in the promo video, like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, said games all share one thing in common: they were nominated for GOTY and the 2025 Game Awards.

However, that’s kind of a moot point when it looks more like V1 to me.

Of course, that opens up an entirely different issue… what the hell would V1 be referring to? Version 1 of something? The Nikon V1 camera? The WW1 German V1-class destroyer torpedo boat? Alright, I'm just reading off Wikipedia at this point, but you see where I'm going with this.

Unless… wait a second. The trailer features a bunch of vaults. Vaults are obviously a pretty big deal in the Fallout universe, and Vault 1 was supposed to feature in the cancelled follow-up to Fallout 2, codenamed Fallout: Van Buren, which would have served as the third mainline Fallout game before Bethesda purchased the IP from Interplay Entertainment.

And rumours have been floating around about a Fallout 3 remake/remaster for almost a year now, which could mean– actually, nevermind, I should save all this theorising for another article.