Most of the hardcore Bethesda RPG fans who’ve invested thousands of hours into Skyrim and Fallout 4 couldn’t wait for the chance to start digging into Starfield.
No matter whether you paid for early access to the game, or have joined the party following its full release, odds are, if you’ve invested in it, you’ll be spending lots of time building spaceships and getting up to wacky interstellar hijinks in the near future.
In the run up to Starfield’s release, we heard a lot about it having taken some inspiration from fourth entry in The Elder Scrolls series and, while everyone on Earth knows about the Adoring Fan at this point, it turns out he’s far from the only Oblivion callback lurking out there in the cosmos.
Have you found any of these Oblivion references in Starfield yet?
If you were as prolific a hoarder in TES IV as many Starfield players have decided to become, filling their ships with all manner of clutter and junk as they hop from system to system, then you probably became very familiar with the Imperial City's Market District.
Among the litany of stores selling all manner of goods to the residents of Cyrodiil’s capital, you might remember The Best Defense, an armour shop run by a pair of blacksmiths. Well, as spotted by Reddit user Wubb333, it looks like it’s lent its name, minus the ‘the’, to a weapon retailer in Starfield.
According to the post, the outlet is in the settlement of HopeTown, which you can find by heading to the planet of Polvo, in the Valo star system. I don’t know about you, but I’ll definitely be plotting that course next time I fire the game up, so I can check it out for myself.
That’s not all though, as it seems HopeTown is a bit of a hub for things that’ll make you nostalgic for the halcyon days when Tamriel needed saving from Mehrunes Dagon and Mankar Camoran.
While you're there you might run into Ron Hope, the CEO of HopeTech, who’s played by legendary voice actor Wes Johnson, who portrayed a whole bunch of Oblivion characters, ranging from Sheogorath to Lucien Lachance and even the announcer for the Imperial City’s arena.
Regardless of whether you’ve just looked up how long it is since Oblivion released and are now feeling very old, make sure to follow us for lots of guides to Starfield’s characters, gear, and mechanics.
You can also check out coverage of some great mods for it and our latest mods of the month.