With Starfield coming out early next year, Bethesda fans are excited to see what the new frontier will bring to the table. It’s the company’s first new IP in over 25 years, so the community has little to go on aside from Bethesda’s official announcements and gameplay teasers.
One seemingly outlandish possibility is the inclusion of Fallout 3’s alien race from the Mothership Zetan expansion pack. While it may sound absurd at first, adding the Zetans to Starfield’s vast world actually makes sense given the game’s setting. Doing so would connect the world of Starfield to Fallout, but if that’s too messy, Bethesda can always chalk it up to being an easter egg. Regardless, a callback to Mothership Zetan would be an amusing inclusion for Fallout fans.
The Zetan Aliens of Fallout 3
Though they first appeared in Fallout 3, the Zetans have reportedly been studying Earth even before the Great War of Fallout. The aliens had been stealing manmade technology and abducting local lifeforms as early as the 1960s. So, while the Zetans’ motivations are unclear, they seem determined to experiment on the human race and other Earthly lifeforms.
It’s also believed that government institutions, notably the Enclave, somehow got their hands on alien devices and used them as a blueprint for their own creations. This is confirmed by the MPLX Novasurge, a unique plasma pistol in Fallout 3 that was supposedly a piece of government-owned alien technology. Fallout 76, which canonically takes place after the Great War and before Fallout 3, further affirms this as players can find alien corpses within the Enclave’s Research Facility.
While the Enclave’s alien research was halted after the Great War, the Zetans continued with their research practices. In Fallout 76, they kidnapped wastelanders for experimentation, having been dubbed the “Flatwoods Monster” in Appalachia. Players can even face off against them in the Invaders from Beyond Fallout 76 event, where they must fight waves of aliens while a mysterious ally known as Homer Saperstein remotely disables their alien technology.
Later down the Fallout timeline, the Zetans finally make a grand appearance in Fallout 3’s Mothership Zetan DLC. In this quest line, the Lone Wanderer is teleported onto an alien spaceship commanded by a group of Zetans. In the spaceship, the player meets other kidnapped humans from different eras of history, essentially confirming that the Zetan race has been preying on mankind for a long time now. Luckily, the Lone Wanderer manages to defeat the aliens and escape their mothership.
Fallout: New Vegas and Fallout 4 also have player encounters involving aliens, but they’re brief when compared to the events mentioned above. Choosing the Fallout: New Vegas perk “Wild Wasteland” allows the player to encounter a UFO near the Horowitz Farmstead, with three hostile aliens waiting near it. Meanwhile, Fallout 4 has an unmarked area where a crashed UFO and a lone alien can be found. Note that whether these aliens are Zetans is never confirmed, but they look similar to the Zetan aliens.
A Potential Alien Race in Starfield
The Zetans have been an active force as early as 2102 (when Fallout 76 began) and as late as 2287 (when Fallout 4 began). Starfield takes place around the year 2330, which isn’t too far off from the Fallout timeline. So, it wouldn’t be too farfetched to believe that the Zetan race persisted for half a century more. If anything, the Zetans would make for an interesting addition to the different races of Starfield. Perhaps the new title could even delve into why they’re so adamant about experimenting on humans. It’d certainly make for an intriguing questline – one tailor-made for Fallout fans.
That said, the Zetans don’t necessarily need a full-blown quest series should they be included in the game. They could simply be part of a random encounter. Perhaps they could try to hijack the player’s spaceship in Starfield while they were traveling through a remote area of the solar system, attacking them with their energy beams. Later, the player could also stumble upon notes and news reports about a hostile alien race roaming the colony.
Canon to Starfield Lore or Merely an Easter Egg?
Incorporating the Zetan aliens in the Starfield IP inevitably makes connections between that and the Fallout universe. It would lead fans to think that the two worlds are the same, calling into question what the “canon” is and raising plenty of questions. For example, if Starfield and Fallout took place in the same universe, it would be difficult to explain the jump from post-apocalyptic human society to intergalactic space colony. Fallout 4 showcased plenty of advanced technology, but it’s likely not enough to establish an entire society spread across different planets.
However, this contention is based on the assumption that the humanoid race in Starfield’s reveal trailers is from Earth. The issue could be explained away if the humanoid beings from Starfield and those from Fallout were two distinct races from different galaxies. So, really, Bethesda has plenty of leeway to make Starfield lore and Fallout lore make sense when taken together.
But the developer doesn’t necessarily have to keep the lore consistent. To avoid all the fuss of making the canon make sense, Bethesda can simply include the Zetan aliens as a Fallout easter egg. After all, past Bethesda titles have included references to the developer’s other IPs – from Nirnroot appearing in Fallout to sweetrolls virtually everywhere. At the end of the day, a callback to one of Fallout’s most absurd add-ons is enough to make fans happy – no lore questions asked.
Of course, all of this is merely speculation on what Bethesda might have in store for players in Starfield. The community will have to wait for announcements or the game’s release to see if the developer decided to spotlight the Zetan race in the new IP. Though with over 1,000 planets to explore, Starfield undoubtedly has plenty of room to sneak in a reference or two to the Fallout alien race.
Starfield releases in 2023 for PC and Xbox Series X.