Starfield is the Perfect Game for Bethesda's Brand of Cosmic Horror

gamerant.com:

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.

Starfield Fans Want the Game to Have a Survival Mode

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