This is an opinion piece from writer Tim Brinkhof. IGN's opinion columns represent the personal viewpoints of the writer, drawing on their own experiences and research to explore the exciting world of video games.

It feels strange to say after so long, but it’s an exciting time to be an Elder Scrolls fan. Confirming news leaked – of all places – in a news report from The Verge about AI-related layoffs at parent company Microsoft, developer Bethesda has not only given us a title for The Elder Scrolls 6, Sentinel, but also a quote, one that suggests the story will have something to do with time travel.

“The scroll offered only a shimmer, a veil thinly lifted to my eyes,” it says. “A future lost. A victory undone. Sands of time scattered by fate.” The quote is attributed to Yazar, Moth Priest of High Queen Iradne of Hammerfell, and dated 4E 206. It reveals two things: first, that Sentinel takes place half a decade after the events of Skyrim, and second, that Hammerfell is our next destination, the region of Tamriel home to the titular Sentinel city. And it’s that region that gives me the most to look forward to.

Though Skyrim will always have a special place in my heart, its very typical medieval fantasy aesthetic and culture saw The Elder Scrolls stray from its eccentric and otherworldly roots. A game set in Hammerfell, Skyrim’s complete opposite in climate and much else, could turn out to be the return to those roots that I have craved for over a decade. But can the developers deliver, or will they simply replace snow with sand?

Before I get into it, let me make it clear: I do not dislike Skyrim. I loved the game when it came out in 2011, and still have a lot of love for it today. I love the game’s atmosphere, and still listen to Jeremy Soule’s ethereal soundtrack – it’s often the music that lulls me to sleep. I love the designs of cities like Solitude and Markarth, and share in the popular opinion that Ulfric, Cicero, and Paarthurnax are among some of the most interesting and iconic characters that Bethesda has ever created.

One thing I don’t love as much as I did back when the game was released is how much its world reminds me of other popular fantasy franchises like The Lord of the Rings and especially Game of Thrones, which started airing just a few months before Skyrim arrived. Compared to Oblivion and Morrowind, Skyrim feels if not uninspired, then at least a little too familiar. Whiterun, as many have noted, is basically Edoras, while Ulfric’s battle for northern independence may well have been inspired by Robb Stark’s own struggles as King in the North in George R.R. Martin’s original novels.

Morrowind's silt striders and building-sized fungi make Skyrim look like an American suburb in comparison.

While Bethesda isn’t to blame for this (at least, and I’ll get to this shortly, not entirely), the game’s unfavorable comparison to Oblivion and Morrowind still stands. I played both these predecessors only after completing Skyrim and didn’t expect to like them as much on account of their technical limitations. Instead, I ended up liking them more, partly because of their stranger, less familiar settings.

Where Skyrim’s Skyrim is inspired by the classic fantasy template of medieval Europe – particularly Viking Scandinavia – Oblivion’s Cyrodiil takes after ancient Rome, a time period and region that’s less frequently mined by high fantasy. The resemblance is also far less on the nose than in Skyrim, ensuring Cyrodill feels distinctly like its own place. The world is rendered even more fantastical thanks to invading Daedric forces, with large chunks of the game taking place in the hellish Deadlands, home to Mehrunes Dagon.

Morrowind goes even harder, presenting a setting that’s almost completely devoid of recognizable real-world counterparts. The province’s silt striders and building-sized fungi make Skyrim look like an American suburb in comparison, and places like Vivec City, with its grid of interconnected pyramids and giant meteor hovering above, to me have always represented the series at its wildest and most creative.

The Elder Scrolls 6: Sentinel - The Lore You Need to Know

We want Sentinel to return to The Elder Scrolls more eccentric roots, but what even is Sentinel? And why could a visit to the region of Hammerfell involve giant robots? Learn everything you need to know in our The Elder Scrolls 6: Sentinel lore explainer.

While Skyrim definitely has moments that evoke a similar emotion – I’m thinking, for example, of when you descend down the Dwemer ruins of Blackreach or visit the Daedric realm of Apocrypha in the Dragonborn DLC – I don’t think I’m stepping out of line when I say that the game as a whole offers a much more conventional and archetypical take on the fantasy genre than either of its immediate predecessors.

Whether Sentinel is going to turn things around remains to be seen. On the one hand, Hammerfell provides the perfect stage for Bethesda to do just that. Its searing deserts and tropical jungles are as far from Skyrim’s landscape as you can get, and have not been seen in the mainline series since their procedurally-generated appearance in the second Elder Scrolls game, Daggerfall (you can, of course, visit more modern renditions in The Elder Scrolls Online). On top of this, Hammerfell’s Redguards are distinctly non-Western, combining Middle Eastern, African, and Japanese influences into something not just unique to Tamriel, but fantasy in general.

On the other hand, we shouldn’t forget that Skyrim’s tameness was a deliberate design decision – one former lore master Kurt Kuhlmann has attributed not only to Todd Howard's personal preferences, but also to commercial reasons.

"If you're in charge of spending all this money and you want your studio to continue to exist and pay salaries for people, you have to make a successful commercial product," Kuhlmann told Reece "Kiwi Talkz" Reilly on YouTube, noting that Todd Howard "gravitates not towards the weird stuff."

Financially speaking, we really shouldn’t expect the developers to alter the game’s winning formula.

To appeal to a larger audience, Bethesda not only streamlined combat and reduced player agency, but made sure its setting would be recognizable and inviting to casual gamers whose experience with fantasy didn’t extend beyond Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings books and Peter Jackson’s film adaptations, which were "wildly popular" at the time, according to both Kohlmann and literally anyone who was alive at the time.

This decision may have come at the cost of the franchise’s originality, but that was a price Bethesda was willing to pay. And chances are, it doesn’t regret it. Skyrim became the company’s most successful game up to that point, not to mention one of the most successful games, period. Financially speaking, we really shouldn’t expect the developers to alter the game’s winning formula – especially not after such a long and costly development cycle. And, of course, Bethesda parent company Xbox is in desperate need of a huge success, doubly so if it deems Sentinel should be an Xbox exclusive.

The title announcement should perhaps confirm that things will be much more fantastical – Sentinel itself is, afterall, very clearly a blend of North African and Middle Eastern architecture and culture, and the sand-swept teaser only hammer(fell)s home the locale’s unique climate. But there’s reason to be skeptical. Look at a map, and you’ll see the city of Sentinel sits on the shores of the Iliac Bay, across from another province that has long been rumored (though not yet confirmed) to be a part of the game’s setting: High Rock. This second province, home to the city of Daggerfall, has a lot in common with Skyrim, both culturally and geographically. It’s more European. More British. More GRRM. More Tolkien-ish. I could easily see Bethesda leaning into those similarities to tug on people’s nostalgia strings, rather than concentrating on Sentinel, Hammerfell, and what makes that region unique and different. The title doesn’t have to dictate where we spend most of our time – Oblivion is just one small part of Oblivion, afterall.

My ideal vision for Sentinel, one I continue to hope for, is one where Bethesda uses the similarity between High Rock and Skyrim to further build up the contrast with Hammerfell. Imagine leaving Skyrim for the neighboring High Rock as Soule’s old music plays, then taking a boat across the Iliac Bay and emerging in what feels like a completely different universe, utterly and blissfully unsure what the future has in store.

I didn’t wait 15 years for more Skyrim. And so I hope that Sentinel is nothing like Skyrim.

Tim Brinkhof is a freelance writer specializing in art and history. After studying journalism at NYU, he has gone on to write for Vox, Vulture, Slate, Polygon, GQ, Esquire and more.