With Starfield being all about a science fiction world grounded in our real life history of space exploration, one may wonder why there are no dogs in Starfield. Surely if dogs can survive the medieval rigors of The Elder Scrolls and the post apocalypse of Fallout, that there’s room for them in Bethesda’s shiny new space game.
Sadly, that turns out to not be the case. As revealed by Comic Book, all dogs are extinct in Starfield.
Well, probably extinct. The Twitter account Can You Pet The Dog noted that dogs were present in Starfield’s concept art, but did not show up in the final game. Furthermore, players found a description for an in-game item called Chocolate Labs, that suggested that their namesake Labradors had gone extinct.
With Labradors, one of the most successful and popular dog breeds around the world today, confirmed to be extinct in Starfield, it’s highly likely that all dogs are gone in Starfield too.
As to why that is, fans don’t seem to have found a reason why yet. If you were to ask me, considering that they were present in the concept art, it sounds like this could just be a complete omission on Bethesda’s end. Maybe they decided that adding dogs in, with all the behavior expected of them, would be too much work on top of everything else they had to build onto Starfield.
On the flip side of the coin, maybe they don’t want their players to experience losing dogs in outer space. And if that were the case, it seems like there are ways to write around that, but it’s kind of understandable. The history of space exploration has not been kind to dogs and other animals.
Truthfully, this sounds like it could be one of those things that Bethesda will remedy in a future patch, this is Bethesda after all. But for now, if you have a certain aching for dogs in space in video games, I have an alternative to offer you.
Space Tail: Every Journey Leads Home is a 2.5 D platformer where you play a dog named Bea, who goes out exploring outer space, encountering puzzles and aliens of all shapes and sizes. This isn’t a replacement for dogs in Starfield, of course, but if video games are about wish fulfillment, this is the game you’re looking for to fulfill this wish. Space Tail: Every Journey Leads Home is available on Steam, GOG, Nintendo Switch, Xbox, and PlayStation.
Of course, Starfield itself has launched and is available to play on PC via Steam, and Xbox Series X|S, as well as on Game Pass.
