Starfield just dropped almost 300 years of backstory ahead of the game's launch next month

The player-character in Starfield looks upon a snowy mountain, with a distant planet and its rings visible in the sky

(Image credit: Bethesda Softworks)

Bethesda has published a fairly exhaustive telling of Starfield's backstory going back almost 300 years before the events of the game.

Over on Starfield's official website, you'll find a new section titled 'The Story So Far', followed by a timeline of key events from 2050 all the way to 2328, just two years before the campaign setting begins.

Until now, we've known only that 20 years before Starfield's story begins, there was a war between the Settled Systems' two most powerful factions: United Colonies and Freestar Collective, and that there's an uneasy peace between both sides as the campaign kicks off. Now we know a whole lot more about what happened before the event of Starfield, including when humans first inhabited Mars and became a space-dwelling species.

As foretold in official Bethesda lore, humans first arrived on Mars in the year 2050 and began fully living in space 50 years later. The United Colonies were established in 2159, just a few short years after humans made their way to the star system Alpha Centauri.

The Freestar Collective is eventually formed in 2189 in opposition to The United Colonies' perceived attempt to expand its borders into the Narion star system, sparking the conflict that would lead to the big war preceding the main campaign. There's a lot more that happens in-between the formation of Freestar and its war with The United Colonies, and all of it's detailed in Bethesda's official account, which is undoubtedly worth a read even if you're tied up with Baldur's Gate 3 at the moment.

Speaking of massive games coming out this year, there sure are a lot of them, eh? From GTA 6 news to Baldur's Gate 3, Starfield and Spider-Man 2, 2023 might be one of the biggest years for games this century.

After earning an English degree from ASU, I worked as a corporate copy editor while freelancing for places like SFX Magazine, Screen Rant, Game Revolution, and MMORPG on the side. I got my big break here in 2019 with a freelance news gig, and I was hired on as GamesRadar's west coast Staff Writer in 2021. That means I'm responsible for managing the site's western regional executive branch, AKA my home office, and writing about whatever horror game I'm too afraid to finish.