Starfield lets you explore Earth but you might not want to

Our pale blue dot is in Bethesda’s space odyssey, but don’t expect to see your house.

When a game comes out that’s set in a place you live, the most natural compulsion is to head for your house to see if they’ve put it in. Unless you live in Manhattan, Downtown LA, or Central London, you probably haven’t enjoyed this phenomenon outside of Flight Simulator (which has everyone’s house in it). But we all live in a certain spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy, which just happens to be where Starfield takes place. Yes, you can visit the SOL system. And yes, going one better than Elite: Dangerous, you can land on Earth.

But you should probably steel yourself first. Or have a very stiff drink. Because it’s not the Earth you recognise: see the video below. Stop reading here unless you’re liable to get raging about spoilers.

You can go to Earth in Starfield, but you might need counseling afterwards.Watch on YouTube

See, in Starfield , an unfathomably thorough ecological disaster has turned the Earth from the ocean-drenched cradle of life we all know and mostly love (nobody likes Birmingham) into a barren ball of sand. There are vague indentations of where the land masses and oceans used to be, but aside from that, there’s nothing left of the planet or the vast human civilization that once called it home. As the in-game lore explains, it was this very disaster that gave humanity the impetus to colonise the stars in the first place:

In 2150, humanity learned the Earth’s magnetosphere would collapse sometime in the next half-century, eliminating all life on the planet. Decisive action was required. But the secure transport of an entire civilization would demand a new kind of cooperation, a new kind of courage, a new kind of union. Thus, in 2159, the United Colonies were formed to make that journey possible. Just one year later, the Galileo, the first of many colony ships, touched down here on Jemison, beginning a new era of human history: the age of the United Colonies.

The most far-fetched idea in Starfield, a vast science fiction game about shooting lasers at space zealots, isn’t anything to do with mysterious artefacts or faster-than-light travel or anything else. It isn’t even the idea that the Earth could be rendered completely inert and devoid of any evidence of human civilisation within a couple of centuries, beyond several trillion tonnes of building sand. No. It’s the idea that in the face of a catastrophic ecological disaster, humanity would work together to save themselves from oblivion. As we all know now from experience, anyone in a position to do anything about it would delay and delay until the sheer inevitability of it dwarfed any remaining political will to enact a solution. And half of the people most likely to boil to death first will insist that it’s all a hoax anyway.

Starfield lets you explore Earth but you might not want to - 4

You can’t see your house from here. |Image credit:Bethesda Softworks

Starfield may be scifi, but the backstory is pure fantasy. Still, this is why they call it escapism. Starfield allows us, while the world burns, to live outlandish dreams like living life on an impossible frontier, feeling the heat of an alien sun, or being able to get a mortgage.

Starfield

Xbox Series X/S , PC

Wishlisted - Our 10 Best Steam Next Fest Demos

Another Next Fest kicks off soon, but we’ve already done the digging for you.

Welcome to Wishlisted, a showcase of our favourite demos from Steam Next Fest: June 2024. Check the video above or watch on YouTube .

Finding the Best NextFest Demos is all about the joy of discovery, but with so many Steam Next Fest demos getting released in such a short amount of time, it can be bewildering. So we’ve decided to show you our ten Best Steam Next Fest games which we think deserve your attention. These are all upcoming Steam Next Fest games that we’re genuinely excited for, and that we think should play nicely on PC handhelds too!

This is just the start of our Next Fest coverage. This week we’ll be previewing loads of upcoming demos across the entire network - right here on VG247, of course, but also over on our sister sites Eurogamer and Rock Paper Shotgun. Bookmark our Wishlisted Steam Fest hub to stay in the loop. And this is well before Next Fest actually starts, so you, dear reader, get to bask for a solid fortnight celebrating all the wonderful new games that are just around the corner. Enjoy!