Starfield’s depiction of Earth is weirdly emotional

destructoid.com:

It seems a bit odd that I would want to spend any time in Starfield visiting Earth. Humanity is wide-eyed with dreams of discovering new planets, colonizing homesteads among the stars. Our science fiction texts are overflowing with the lofty possibilities of leaving our home world behind to seek a future elsewhere.

Yet, I was intrigued. I knew the backstory of Earth – or at least Starfield‘s version of it – so I wasn’t hopeful about seeing any level of detail. I wasn’t expecting, for example, to land on my street and see how Bethesda had modelled my home. This isn’t Microsoft Flight Simulator, after all.

But still, I wanted to see what it looked like. I wanted to see what kind of outcome one of the world’s biggest video game developers had in store for humanity.

So I landed on Earth. Brazil, in fact. A bizarre choice for someone who’s lived all their life (nearly 40 years) in the UK and has never set foot in any of the Americas. But it didn’t matter. What I was greeted with was a desolate plain of non-life, a barren outstretch of what was once our collective home.

It was then I was struck with a couple of thoughts.

First of all, I understand this version of our planet does have iconic landmarks you can visit, albeit now ruined. However, my time on Earth in-game was short, so I didn’t get the chance to seek out any recognizable or historically significant buildings.

What I saw in Starfield could easily have been any other place besides Earth. As far as Bethesda is concerned, Earth is almost a non-entity in the future, a player who’s exited the universal playground. This is, for want of a better phrase, a grim reality that Todd Howard and his team saw fit to actualize.

I don’t intend this article to be a preachy warning