AsStarfield’s release looms ever closer, fans are eagerly poring every frame of the Gameplay Deep Dive that Bethesda released during Summer Game Fest. This isn’t an exaggeration either, the information in this article was gleaned from 2–3 frames of that video.
Atone point, there are a couple of Bethesda employees playing Starfield and the camera pans to the screen for a few seconds before the next segment of the Direct begins (timestamped). For that split second, you can see the player hover over Mars on the galaxy map. As with all planets in Starfield, a drop-down menu of information appears when hovered.
For Mars, while fauna is marked as ‘none', flora is marked as ‘primordial’. This was spotted by auser on the Starfield subreddit, and obviously, there’s an intentional distinction here. In biology, a primordium is the simplest set of cells that can trigger the growth of an organ. Essentially, it’s the earliest stage you can recognise an organism.
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As the comments of the aforementioned post point out, this is likely referring to single-cell organisms or algae. To date, humanity has yet to find any conclusive evidence of life on the red planet. While the planet’s surface is highly radioactive and inhospitable, it’s been theorised that life could be flourishing deep beneath the planet’s surface. Furthermore, there’s a lot of evidence out there that suggests Mars was once home to a large ocean which is key as water is one of the key ingredients needed to support life.
As Starfield is set in the year 2330, Bethesda may simply be making a prediction that we’ll have found some evidence of life on Mars in the next 300 or so years. We know that Mars is anaccessible locationin Starfield, as it houses Cydonia, the biggest mining colony in the United Colonies.
An interesting tidbit of information we can see from that same frame is that the Sol System is marked as level 1, presumably meaning it can be accessed throughout the entire game. Another Reddit user hastheorisedthat the player may begin their journey on Mars based on the heavy focus on the Sol System in the Direct, the fact that we know the player begins as an employee of a mining company (Argos Extractors) and now, the Sol System being level one.
Speculation is likely only to ramp as we approach Starfield’s release on September 6.
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