Xbox players and Game Pass subscribers have been scanning horizons for news of Starfield. Microsoft's killer app, the game is hotly anticipated. Developed by Bethesda, the makers of The Elder Scrolls, the sci-fi epic promises to be a huge release and the studio is steadily dripping out more information on the title.
The latest detail to drop concerns the fate of humanity, which was elaborated in a video where the game's lead quest designer Will Shen was asked questions posed by the fandom.
Starfield is set at a time when humans have left Earth and made Mars home. Exactly why this is will be explored in the game, the designer revealed.
In Starfield it sounds like players will be able to visit and explore our own solar system, but it seems Earth is no longer in a state that's habitable. Shen revealed that players will be able to explore what happened to our home planet and explore the Mars city to which humanity moved (via Gamesradar).
"You'll be sent there on a mission from Constellation to discover the mysteries of the artifacts. And you'll get into contact with the question of 'what happened to Earth', but you'll also go to Mars," Shen said. "And there's actually a settlement, one of the early settlements that humanity created after they left Earth – it's called Cydonia, and that's a whole city with its own problems and people to meet."
While it wasn't made explicit if players will be able to go down to Earth to explore the abandoned and presumably ruined Earth, it's a tantalising prospect to uncover this mystery of how our home planet became uninhabited, and it seems the Mars city will be a location that players will be able to spend more time exploring.
In the same interview, Shen also explained that random encounters in Starfield will also make use of procedural generation. Skyrim players will know that that game features random encounters to enliven the world, but apparently these kinds of encounters in Starfield will be that much more engrossing and can involve entire outposts.
Meanwhile, Starfield is still set for the vague date of the "first half" of 2023, which is not that long to go in the starry scheme of things.