Starfieldwas my most anticipated game of 2023, and I’ve barely had time to play it. So far, I’ve only spent about three hours inBethesda’s space exploration sim. That, in the business, is what we call barely scratching the surface of the surface.
But as I spend time playing other games I need to play for work (and, you know, for fun), I’ve found a cool life hack that allows me to also be playing Starfield. Famously, Starfield has 1000 planets that you can visit while voyaging across its galaxy. Right now, I’ve only seen a few. That means I don’t know what’s on 900+ others. And that means I can just imagine that the games I’m playing take place on all the Starfield planets I haven’t found yet.
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This might seem like a strange and unnecessary thing to imagine, but it’s helpful to me. As I and others here at TheGamer have noted,2023 has been a very busy year for gaming— the best year the medium has seen since 2017. And, look, I’m a person who works best with a little structure. I have a to-do list for every work day and an overarching one for each year. So, the little thought experiment I’ve decided to begin conducting is imagining that all of those unrelated games I’ll be attempting to keep up with are their own planets in Starfield. Game of the year prep this fall will be one big tour of the galaxy.
For example,Baldur’s Gate 3is just one gigantic fantasy planet somewhere out there in Starfield’s cosmos. Sure, it’s fantasy. That’s fine, it’s a fantasy planet. Sure, it has a different perspective from Starfield. That’s because it’s an I5-0-METRIC planet.
I’m revisitingCyberpunk 2077in anticipation of Phantom Liberty and, you guessed it, that’s a planet in Starfield, too. I haven’t made it to Neon yet in Starfield (like I said, I’m still very early) so Night City is currently my placeholder Neon.
Oh, and when I was playingSea of Stars? That was like the bit inSouth Park: The Stick of Truthwhere the boys go to Canada and suddenly everything looks like an earlyDragon Questgame. Sea of Stars is Starfield’s 1990s planet.
And, when the fall rush really kicks off?Super Mario Bros. Wondertakes place in the Flower Kingdom, which is outside the familiar Mushroom Kingdom. Who’s to say this new Kingdom isn’t located on one of Starfield’s many heavenly bodies? Same goes forSonic Superstars. I don’t know where the Northstar Islands are exactly, but it sure sounds like they wouldn’t be out of place in space!Alan Wake 2will simply be a vivid nightmare my character is having from the comfort of his Neon apartment.
AndMarvel’s Spider-Man 2is easy to contextualize — Earth exists in Starfield and Spider-Man is one of Earth’s favorite heroes. I’ll just imagine I’ve discovered a relic from centuries past, a game that earlier generations of Earthlings played at the dawn of the millennia. Actually, that would work for all of these games. Pretend I started with that idea.
