Bethesda has started revealing some more information about its highly anticipated new sci-fi RPG Starfield. While there are still many questions that fans have about Starfield, one of the biggest aspects of the game that Bethesda is showing off are some of the planets and factions players will interact with during their adventure. This has led fans to start speculating about other aspects of Starfield's world, such as its history, important characters, and bits of lore that help it stick out from other games in the genre.
This speculation is particularly relevant for fans who are curious how traditional Starfield's hard sci-fi really is. Starfield seems to be taking a more grounded approach to its sci-fi, with its aesthetic based on real-world designs and concepts from NASA and other space-faring organizations. However, there is an argument to made for Starfield not restricting itself to portraying its universe with too much realism. For an example of the direction that Starfield should take with its universe's lore, one does not have to look further than the weirder elements in one of Bethesda's other RPG series: The Elder Scrolls.
Weird Lore in The Elder Scrolls
Weird lore plays a large role in making The Elder Scrolls a great RPG setting. It helps the world feel more alive and alien compared to the real world, while still being grounded in familiar concepts like humanoid beings, gods, and swords. These familiarities are then undercut by strange locales in provinces like Morrowind, as well as the influences of other beings like the Daedra and their dimension of Oblivion. The lore also includes various weird divinities and a pantheon of gods, including the ability for any mortal to ascend through means such as CHIM or mantling. Not only is this a unique part of the world for players to explore, it also gives the writers a narrative dimension to explore with the lore's more powerful characters.
The lore also helps bring the races in The Elder Scrolls to life. These races have some very weird aspects to them, such as The Elder Scrolls' Khajiit having different variants determined by the positioning of Tamriel's two moons at the time of their birth. It gives players who opt to be one of those different races more opportunities to make their characters unique and roleplay within the world, while giving players who prefer other races some interesting information to discover while they play.
How Weird Lore Can Help Starfield
One way that weird lore can help Starfield is similar to The Elder Scrolls in that Starfield could house a variety of strange alien races. Not only would this give players more options when making their characters, it would also help Starfield define its universe as more unique compared to franchises like The Outer Worlds or Star Wars. Having the aliens feel unlike anything else players have come across before would make Starfield stand out, and one of the best ways to do that is to make them as different from humans as possible with truly weird and varied lore.
Having weird lore would also help Starfield include more inventive and varied quests. The early reveals of a few planets have some fans worrying about Starfield not including enough variety, which has been a problem in some recent Bethesda titles. Introducing weird lore would allow the quest writers for Starfield to come up with more creative ideas that help the game feel like the true next-gen title.
What Starfield's Weird Lore Could Look Like
As with any sci-fi game, Starfield has a lot to explain about its world. A sprawling interplanetary setting like Starfield not only needs to outline its planets, factions, and history, but also where it all came from and how its technology works. These questions present great opportunities for Bethesda to introduce some weird lore into Starfield. Having a unique mechanic behind how starships are able to travel between worlds would not only be interesting, it could be used mechanically for some interesting systems like limiting how much players can fast travel in Starfield.
Weirder lore could also be used to explain the nature and history of the different planets in Starfield. Starfield will want to make every one of its planets feel alive and different, and having dedicated lore for each planet is a great way to help the developers build them up. Starfield could also use weird lore in its narrative, both to explain the origins of life in the universe and to fill the outer reaches of space with cosmic entities or powers. Having some sort of all-powerful being just beyond the player's reach at the outer bounds of space would be a solid plot point that offers a lot of different approaches for the game's writers.
Starfield could be the beginning of a new era for Bethesda after its acquisition by Microsoft, so it will be great if it is able to satisfy the studio's many fans. There are many challenges that Starfield faces, but if any studio is up to the challenge it would likely be the team at Bethesda. Fans don't have too much longer to wait, so hopefully Bethesda will have some more information to share about the game soon.
Starfield releases on November 11, 2022 for PC and Xbox Series X/S.