Whenever there's even a hint of what's to come for the next Elder Scrolls game, fans are all over it trying to pick apart what's fake and what's true. News on the next entry in the franchise has been sparse, which is usually par for the course with Bethesda games. Especially following up the ever-popular Skyrim, fan anticipation for something that's potentially even bigger or better means expectations are huge. The game has remained relatively quiet since the teaser trailer at E3 2018, but recently, there was an interesting leak detailing what could be coming in the next iteration of the series.
While it's obviously important to remain speculative, this most recent leak brought a lot of potential information about the sixth Elder Scrolls game and highlighted a lot of specific information about the upcoming epic title. Seemingly too much information that is, which is why the leak was eventually confirmed as faked. As with any Reddit rumor about an unreleased game, the leak was posted without context or evidence, so the "grain of salt" expression absolutely made sense there. Similar to the other leaks fans have seen so far, there were plenty of reasons why this post was definitely too good to be true.
Posted on r/BethesdaSoftworks last week by a user named ToddIsMyMom (as if that username wasn't red flag enough), the user alleged to have a bevy of information regarding Bethesda's upcoming projects. Aside from The Elder Scrolls 6, the user also allegedly had insider information on Starfield gameplay details, the new IP revealed alongside the new Elder Scrolls game at E3 2018. After the post marinated on the subreddit for several days, this morning it was confirmed as fake by the original poster and corroborated by the subreddit's moderators as well.
Five days is still a long time for an alleged leak to remain before it's confirmed fake, so obviously fans ran with it as a potential tease. The bulk of the post detailed The Elder Scrolls 6's setting and release year, as well as some other in-depth development information. What's interesting is there were a lot of glaring issues with the presentation, and the leak itself was written very atypically compared to the usual game leaks. Lengthy paragraphs, lots of name drops, information inconsistencies, and most notably very specific details about games that likely still have plenty of time left in their respective development cycles.
The Release Date and DLC Details
For one thing, the leak prominently mentions that the game will be releasing sometime in 2025, eight years after its official announcement. Not even Skyrim waited that long after its initial announcement, coming out just over a year after the first teaser. As fans have seen with Fallout 76, very rarely does Bethesda shake up its formula in any of its core franchises. To reveal a game in a revered franchise so incredibly early would be a marketing mishap of disastrous proportions, setting Bethesda up for a fall even if the game does have minor issues.
It's also worth noting how broad and ambiguous the DLC mention was in the purported leak as well. That the staff was "brimming with fantastic ideas" and how the DLC hadn't been officially planned because "it's usually based off of ideas individuals have after the game is complete" makes no sense from a development standpoint. DLC is almost always planned in advance of any game's main release, especially DLC for such an expansive and ambitious game like Skyrim. Compare these tidbits of information with the deluge of highly specific game information from the leak's earlier bullet points, and it seems unlikely that these details would not be known ahead of time.
Ultra-Specific Gameplay Details
Obviously from a consumer's perspective, gameplay details are generally some of the last things fans get to know on the way to a game's release. Concrete details on mechanics in a game usually take the longest to definitively nail down, and isn't made abundantly clear until very late in development. The bulk of the Reddit leak goes into detail about the "beefed up" magic spells in Elder Scrolls 6, a revamped crafting system similar to that of Fallout 4, and the overhaul of Guilds/Factions.
Gameplay details outlined in the leak are bolstered by several different comparisons, adding to a sense of suspicion. According to the leak, many of the spells were retooled to emulate elements of Dark Souls and a highly popular Skyrim magic overhaul mod. The point is too many comparisons can feel forced or reaching, which was what made the leak's credibility even more concerning. Sure, games inspire themselves to iterate off one another's ideas all the time in the industry, but when nearly all the innovative aspects of a new game's mechanics are direct comparisons to a variety of other franchises where those mechanics are praised, it comes off as a bit too optimistic.
Constant Name-Dropping
Perhaps the biggest red flag for this supposed Elder Scrolls leak was the fact that many of the development details were followed up by name drops of several developers and executives within Bethesda Game Studios like Todd Howard. Along with Howard, Julian Lefay, Mark Jones, Ashley Cheng, and several more members of Bethesda had their names invoked when making points within the leak, some of them multiple times. Leaker "ToddIsMyMom" makes it abundantly clear at the beginning of the post that he works closely with Bethesda and allegedly knows all this information firsthand. Even if that were true, nobody would use their fellow colleagues' names like citations in a high school essay as proof of credibility.
Much of the development-focused information at the beginning of the leak exemplifies this issue greatly. Every single person who's name was invoked in the leak was in service to hammering down a point made by the leaker. It was clear that these people were used as jumping off points to convey the leaker's ideas. Todd Howard's Radiant AI concept is brought up by the leaker attempting to bolster their idea of a revamped NPC social behavior system that was being included in The Elder Scrolls 6.
Compared to Other Leaks Thus Far
Compared to other reported leaks for The Elder Scrolls 6 so far, this Reddit leak has proven to be simultaneously the most comprehensive and most ambitiously fake leaks fans have seen for the game already. Many other leaks have been relatively tame, such as the leaks back in February that claimed to prove what the setting for Elder Scrolls 6 was going to be. But with all of the glaring issues in this %eddit leak, it's no surprise that fans themselves were able to eventually confirm the leak was fake. That being said, it did receive plenty of buzz on the internet over the weekend, so the leaker at least accomplished their goal.
The Elder Scrolls 6 is currently in development.