Bethesda’s titles are known for tapping into horror, which makes for a more interesting game world. The Elder Scrolls series has its fair share of spooky quests, while the Fallout series has been leaning into cosmic horror more and more heavily with each passing release. That said, Starfield could benefit from the same treatment.

Starfield is set in the vast outer space, meaning there are plenty of new planets, settlements, and intergalactic races for players to encounter. It’s also the perfect setting to hide a couple of incomprehensible horrors.

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Cosmic Horror in The Elder Scrolls Series

Image from Skyrim showing the Daedric Prince Hermaeus Mora.

The Elder Scrolls series is primarily known for its fun, open-world gameplay set in a fantasy world. The titles come with a whole slew of quests, from the main campaign to multiple faction questlines, and then dozens more side quests. Some of those quests dive into spooky, oftentimes macabre territory. For instance, “Blood on Ice” and “The House of Horrors” are just two of Skyrim’s scariest quests. However, they don’t exactly fall under the category of cosmic horror.

The most notable reference to cosmic horror in The Elder Scrolls series comes from Oblivion, specifically the settlement known as Hackdirt. In the quest, “A Shadow Over Hackdirt,” the player must save an Argonian woman from the strange village, only to find that its townspeople are engaging in human sacrifices for their mysterious masters, the “Deep Ones.” After saving the Argonian, there’s not much else to be found about the so-called Deep Ones. However, many in the community have pointed out that this quest is very similar to H. P. Lovecraft’s novella The Shadow over Innsmouth. So, that’s a clear connection to cosmic horror.

Skyrim doesn’t have a quest that directly references Lovecraft, but it does feature a key character that could be categorized under the cosmic horror category – the Daedric Prince, Hermaeus Mora. In the quest “Discerning the Transmundane,” Skyrim showcases just how powerful the Daedric Prince’s knowledge can be as simply reading their Oghma Infinium – a Daedric artifact – causes an NPC to disintegrate. Moreover, the entirety of Apocrypha, which is Hermaeus Mora’s realm of Oblivion, oozes cosmic horror as the area takes shape as a huge library holding esoteric knowledge.

Cosmic Horror in the Fallout Series

fallout-4-dunwich-borers-back-view

Of Bethesda’s two most popular IPs, Fallout tends to lean into cosmic horror more. Fallout 3 started the trend with the chilling story of the Dunwich Building. However, Fallout 4 doubled down on the fear factor, introducing more areas and questlines that were inspired by Lovecraft’s brand of cosmic horror.

The creepiest area in Fallout 4 is, of course, the Dunwich Borers, a quarry owned by the people from the Dunwich Building. Hiding in its subterranean caverns is a terrifying story involving human sacrifice and some sort of god, laying dormant just underneath the rubble. That god is likely Ug-Qualtoth, who was given a name in Fallout 3. Aside from this, there’s also the Pickman Gallery and the Cabot family questline, both of which reference different works by Lovecraft.

Even Fallout 76 carries on with this trend, particularly with its inclusion of a creature known as The Interloper, which also happens to be connected to the Cult of the Mothman. The stories surrounding these entities are more obvious in their cosmic horror inspirations as a relevant NPC talks of their “unknowable horrors” and how even he must become a “conduit of the unknowable.” And that’s only one of the scary things in Fallout 76.

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Cosmic Horror in the World of Starfield

Starfield Philosophical Ideas

Given that Bethesda is sprinkling cosmic horrors into its most recent games, it wouldn’t be far-fetched to assume that the company intends to do the same for Starfield. After all, the game’s intergalactic world is a prime setting for such inclusions. It also gives the developer more room to innovate its methods of introducing these cosmic horrors.

Perhaps Starfield could even hint that the terrifying creatures from The Elder Scrolls and Fallout exist across universes. For instance, some fans in the community believe that Ug-Qualtoth and Hermaeus Mora are the same entity. This is because Ug-Qualtoth is often compared to a being known as Yog-Sothoth in the Lovecraftian mythos. And despite having multiple forms, Yog-Sothoth is commonly known to appear as a mass of glowing orbs, eyes, and tendrils. That sounds an awful lot like how Hermaeus Mora is presented in The Elder Scrolls.

Starfield could play a part in connecting these two entities by including a variant of Hermaeus Mora/Ug-Qualtoth somewhere in its game world. If anything, the intergalactic setting is the perfect place to do this as Yog-Sothoth is described as an “Outer God” or, in other words, a cosmic entity residing beyond the confines of Earth. More specifically, Yog-Sothoth is believed to reside outside the universe. These ideas alone would make for an interesting Starfield quest wherein the player has to journey to the furthest reaches of the game map – only to find an unspeakable horror waiting at the edge of the universe.

However, a creature tied to Hermaeus Mora/Ug-Qualtoth doesn’t have to be where the cosmic horrors end. Bethesda can also implement gargantuan beasts similar to the Anglerfish of the Outer Wilds. Doing so would certainly make for more interesting space exploration. Plus, it gives players a sense of just how small they are in the vast, vast galaxy.

Finally, players can probably expect more quests that directly reference Lovecraft’s short stories. The exact stories, however, will only be revealed once the game is released. One potential reference could be At the Mountains of Madness, which tells of an expedition into a snowy land that very quickly becomes dangerous when those involved begin to discover strange, prehistoric specimens and even stranger architecture buried beneath the frost. Another option would be The Shadow Out of Time, which involves a strange alien race that can travel through space and time. These are just some of the many ways Bethesda can incorporate cosmic horror into its upcoming IP.

Starfield releases in 2023 for PC and Xbox Series X/S.

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