Highlights
- Players in Starfield are using their creative skills to recreate real-world landmarks and retail stores, like Dollar General, within the game’s futuristic setting.
- The game allows players to reference pop culture and pay homage in unique, impressive, and sometimes humorous ways, such as building a Waffle House or a spaceship inspired by a legendary Pokemon.
- While it may be fun to recreate familiar elements in the game, players should be mindful of the game’s limits if they want to get the most of its outpost-building features.
Any game that lets players create something is bound to see parts of the real world remade in-game, something a Starfield player illustrated by bringing the US-based discount retailer Dollar General into Bethesda’s space-faring RPG. This comes as part of said player’s ongoing efforts to revitalize Starfield’s desolate version of future Earth with iconic fixtures of the American economic landscape.
The latest addition to Bethesda’s stable of vast open-world RPGs gives players plenty of ways to not just flex their creative muscles while they traverse the galaxy, but to reference various pieces of pop culture in the process. Whether that be recreating famous people in Starfield’s character creator, or building a spaceship based on a famed sci-fi vessel, or basing an outpost on a well-known location, fans haven’t passed up on the opportunity to pay homage in unique, impressive, and occasionally funny ways.
TikTok user St4rboy provided an example of the latter recently with a futuristic Waffle House made in Starfield, aptly placed on Earth next to the NASA launch tower near Cape Canaveral, Florida. They have now followed that up with a Dollar General next to the Waffle House with all the amenities one might expect from one of the chain’s discount stores, including shelves, coolers for drinks, and shopping carts (or rather cargo dollies serving as carts) randomly blocking aisles. St4rboy also added a landing pad outside to serve as the parking lot, which they joked is big enough for fights as well as parking.
Without getting too into spoilers, Earth becoming a lifeless rock factors heavily into Starfield’s story and humanity’s expansion into what will become the Settled Systems. Gameplay-wise, the planet itself is lacking in valuable resources that players may find on the hundreds of other planets in Starfield’s virtual galaxy. Combined with the limits placed on the amount of outposts one can build, it may be in players’ best interests to avoid following St4rboy’s example and just enjoy watching them restart the US economy in Starfield instead.
Retail stores might seem like an odd choice to remake in-game, compared to more common options like fan-favorite characters or vehicles, but St4rboy’s not the first person to run with that idea in recent times. Earlier this year, another player paid homage to a bygone era with a Blockbuster Video store made in Far Cry 5, using that game’s level editor to faithfully recreate the once-prominent video-rental chain.
Only two weeks have passed since Starfield first became available for people to play, yet that time has seen plenty of clever player-made creations being shared online. Examples include ships inspired by everything from Star Wars to Batman, as well as one hilarious Starfield ship made to resemble a duck. No doubt there will be plenty more where that came from as time goes on and the fanbase gets comfortable with the game’s creative systems.
Starfield is available for PC and Xbox Series X/S.