Is the Starfield IP gimped from the start? Bethesda's take on Earth feels lazy and nonsensical.

I picked up Starfield early this year and have been enjoying it for the most part, and there is a lot of potential in its worldbuilding, but one thing really bugs me is how Bethesda handled Earth. In a game all about space exploration and humanity’s future, you'd expect Earth to carry serious emotional and narrative weight.

Instead, it's just an empty, lifeless desert with no ruins, no major lore reveals, no sense of loss — just a few random and inexplicable landmarks dropped in like Easter eggs. Bethesda says the atmosphere was lost due to a failed experiment, but... that's it? No real consequences, no mystery, nothing left to explore?

It feels like a massive missed opportunity, like they wrote Earth off entirely just to avoid having to design it. That’s not just a wasted location; it undercuts the whole setting. If the destruction of Earth doesn’t matter in this universe, then why should I care about humanity’s future in it?

I started wondering if maybe other versions of Earth exist through Unity — different universes where Earth survived or had a different fate. But nope. As far as we know, no alternate Earths exist anywhere in the game. Not even a passing mention from Starborn who’ve supposedly seen countless realities. The dead, barren Earth is all we get — in every universe.

That’s honestly the nail in the coffin for me. If Starfield doesn’t explore this in DLC or a future expansion, I don’t see how this IP can live up to the promise of a rich sci-fi setting. Right now it feels hollow, like Bethesda built the frame of a universe but forgot to fill it in.

Curious to hear if others feel the same or if I’m missing something.