Far more was revealed about Starfield at E3 2021 than prospective players had been able to glimpse in the three years since the game's announcement. As Bethesda's first new IP in over 25 years, fans of the studio have had far less to go on when trying to figure out the story of the upcoming game than they have had in past lead-ups to Elder Scrolls and Fallout releases.
One major hint about Starfield's plot comes from Todd Howard himself. In a video released on Bethesda Softworks' official YouTube channel, Bethesda's director says that "Starfield's about hope, our shared humanity, and searching for the answers to life's greatest mystery." What exactly "life's greatest mystery" is remains a mystery in and of itself for Bethesda fans waiting for the game. There are some good reasons to believe that Starfield may be about the search for alien life. However, based on the evidence so far, that search may be a little more complicated than it first seems.
Humanity's Final Journey in Starfield
In the short video, "Into the Starfield: The Journey Begins," Todd Howard's voiceover lays out some broad details about Starfield's story. "When we look to the sky we wonder if we're alone. What's out there. What our future holds." The first part of that comment would suggest that Starfield will be about searching for alien life. This could be the thrust of the main quest. The Starfield trailer revealed at E3 suggested that the player was embarking on "humanity's final journey," which could be interpreted as the quest to prove that humans aren't alone in the universe.
There are some other options. "Humanity's final journey" and "life's greatest mystery" could refer to finding out where life came from, if it had a creator, what happens after or before death, or any number of other broad existential questions. Todd Howard's focus on whether or not humans are "alone," however, does seem to point towards a search for alien life. The trailer's line "what you've found in the key to unlocking everything," could even refer to a signal or sign from an alien civilization, or a narrative equivalent.
Starfield's Aliens
There's a complication, however. Some of the Starfield concept art revealed so far has already shown what appear to be aliens. One image shows a player character observing some large crab-like aliens from a distance. Other images show planets that already have trees and bird-like creatures, though these could be transplants as Constellation and other factions terraform the planets they colonize.
It seems most likely that the gist of Starfield's main quest can be narrowed down from a search for alien life to a search for alien life with human or super-human intelligence. Whether or not humanity is "alone" could easily refer to intelligent life, which most of the extraterrestrial creatures the player interacts with in the game may not count as. This could also mean that Starfield will not have intelligent alien NPCs, at least for the vast majority of the game as the player attempts to search out intelligent life.
How exactly that search will unfold, whether it will be successful, and what form intelligent alien life will take if Starfield players do discover it all remains to be seen. The voice overs in both the E3 trailer and Into the Starfield seem to paint a picture of a future where humanity has spread among the stars, discovering new landscapes, plant life, and animals, but not intelligent alien life. Finding intelligent aliens may be the aimed destination of Constellation, but how exactly the player's "final journey" will truly unfold will hopefully be up to them when the game launches next year.
Starfield releases November 11, 2022, for PC and Xbox Series X/S.