Top 5 Bethesda Easter eggs we want to see in Starfield (and 5 more we could see from other franchises)

Due to Bethesda's lack of confidence in its current level of polish, Starfield has been delayed to 2023.

Bethesda will doubtless be ironing out its vast amount of content for the next couple of months other than squashing bugs. On the other hand, they will also have plenty of windows to add further drips of flavor content, such as easter eggs.

With two of the biggest RPG franchises under its belt, Bethesda nearly qualifies as one of the pillars of modern RPG development. Their titles, huge as they are in scale, also tend to be jam-packed with cheeky references and Easter eggs, often to their own games.

Starfield, no doubt, will have the same.

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Five Easter eggs from other Bethesda games that Starfield should feature

1) Nirnroot

Nirnroot is a scarce plant in Nirn, discovered sometime around the Third Era. In Skyrim and Oblivion, the plant's rarity is a highly sought-after alchemical reagent.

The same, however, can be said about numerous other higher-tier ingredients. What makes Nirnroot unique is the various questline closely intertwined with it and its crimson variant in Skyrim.

Nirnroot has already been a rather blunt Easter egg in Fallout 4 with Experiment NRT-0001. It is a similarly bioluminescent plant, as per Fallout lore, that was hybridized by a Brotherhood field scribe to be ultimately brewed into an 'oddly good tea.'

Being one of the most iconic herbs of the Elder Scrolls universe, we might get to see references to it in Starfield, given its propensity for eccentric alien flora.0

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2) Zetans

The Fallout universe, thanks to its atom-punk conception, also contained its fair share of cold-war commonplaces and anxieties. As a staple of the space race age, extraterrestrial contact was also referred to in nearly all the games.

It was Mothership Zeta, the final Fallout 3 DLC, that addressed this head-on with a somewhat campy adaptation of an alien prison breakout. Zetans have become a canon contingent of extraterrestrial life forms from an advanced civilization that carries out experiments on abducted humans.

Seeing as Mothership Zeta is one of a kind as a Fallout DLC to date, Starcraft will undoubtedly have some reference to Zetans.

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3) M'aiq the Flyer

Like Patches from FromSoftware's Souls-borne games, M'aiq the Flyer occupies a unique position in the Elder Scrolls franchise by being the only NPC to appear in four games — Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, and Elder Scrolls Online.

Unlike Patches, though, M'aiq's eccentric character is more of a meta-commentary on Elder Scrolls and cliches surrounding NPCs. His nickname, 'the liar,' rings true in a very literal sense: more often than not, he will spread misinformation from his myriad tomes of knowledge.

Being such a beloved and enigmatic character who has attained pseudo-Godhood through CHIM, his presence might as well transcend the franchise into the stars.

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4) Bright Brotherhood

Bright Brotherhood is a fringe religious cult based in the REPCONN Test Site near Novac in Fallout: New Vegas. When contacted, they task the courier with clearing out the nightkin-infested underground of the REPCONN base so that they can go about their business.

Said business is, in fact, space travel via a makeshift spaceship. Led by Jason Bright, this faction of ghouls essentially believe in finding their Nirvana through space travel.

At the end of their questline chain, they do manage to take off on their spaceship, giving the courier the rein to choose their path.

It is unknown whether Jason Bright and company ever reach their destined land. It is implied that they theoretically cannot with the technology at hand.

Given how the charm and personality of this faction earned it standout popularity among fans, we might see a Bright Brotherhood derelict mock-up in Starfield.

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5) Skyrim Space Program

The 'Skyrim Space Program' is a fancy community name for something that is technically a Skyrim physics kink. A creature found on the Whiterun hold and elsewhere, Giants are a race unique to Skyrim, towering above the player with a mammoth bone for a club.

When confronted, the giant can often kill a low-to-mid level Dragonborn with a single swing. However, due to how Skyrim handles the Havok physics calculation, this swing often sends users flying skywards, meaning that if they survive the attack, they are likely to die from the fall on their way back to Nirn.

The 'Skyrim Space Program' is something addressed and mitigated by community patches, but they were a staple of Skyrim montage bonanzas back in the legacy build days of the game. It would be conceivable for Starfield to have at least some reference to the giants and their space program.

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Five more Easter eggs from non-Bethesda titles we might get to see

1) Spacewar!

Released in 1962 for the DEC PDP-1 minicomputer system, Spacewar! occupies a unique place in the history of gaming. It is by no stretch the first video game ever created, but it does remain an instantly recognizable golden prototype of fundamental video game formulae.

Set in a gravity well, Spacewar's entire setting is also an invocation of the infinity of space, a theme very central to Starfield itself.

It could be as literal as including it as an arcade minigame as a memoir of humanity on Earth, something we have already seen in video games long before the Starfield era.

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2) Stargate portal

The Stargate franchise is a staple of the space opera genre, or at least the more refined iteration of it in the 90s. Central to the plot of the first movie (1994) and most other media from the franchise are the titular devices, acting as an interdimensional portal.

Reference to Stargate occurs in contemporary media outside video games as well, most notably in The Simpsons. Starfield, however, has the unique advantage of setting up a throwback to the classics simply by placing a well-hidden Stargate portal in the Settled Systems.

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3) Prey

An often-overlooked gem, Prey bears the mark of Arkane Studio's experience from their various gameplay innovation in past titles. Released in 2017, this game places gamers in the shoes of Morgan Yu, the protagonist tasked with dealing with the breakout of an organic infestation.

The fact that Bethesda Softworks published it makes it more likely for Starfield to have an Easter egg from the game. They could do it in many ways: through a similar quest to deal with a gooey morphing sentient infestation or even adding the Talos-I space station as an explorable area in Starfield.

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4) System Shock 2

An old classic from an era where 3D role-playing games were just beginning to find their stride, System Shock 2 is revered for its take on immersion and player agency. As a title that purports to take the looting-shooting-exploration loop of modern RPGs to its next level, a sendoff for System Shock 2 would make complete sense in Starfield.

What brings it closer to a potential Starfield Easter egg, however, is its context. Like Starfield, System Shock 2 also has a NASA-punk setup where the Space Race has accelerated and caused the AI takeover events of the first game.

The sequel, moreover, is more directly related to space travel, as the game begins with the first promise of faster-than-light travel.

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5) Han shot first

If there was one non-video game franchise Starfield should have a homage to, it is Star Wars. Owned by Lucasfilms in its heyday of cultural impact, Star Wars remains the indubitable chalice-bearer of the space opera genre.

If Starfield wants to go for popular appeal, there is perhaps no better way to make a Star Wars Easter egg than the 'Han shot first' controversy. This is where the franchise exchanges hands between Lucasfilms and Disney, resulting in a debatable addition in a bar shootout scene in Episode IV - A New Hope.

Note: This article reflects the author's views.