Cut Starfield content has surfaced online, and has revealed a surprising twist for the later New Game Plus playthroughs. Throughout Starfield‘s story, players interact with a group of enigmatic beings called Starborn, after players have collected enough Artifacts. After some time it becomes apparent that the Starborn are ascended individuals who have surpassed their humanity by reaching and passing through The Unity, enabling them to cross entire universes.
[Warning: The following article contains spoilers for Starfield]Upon the end of Starfield‘s campaign, players can pass through The Unity themselves, becoming Starborn and essentially unlocking an endless New Game Plus in which they can replay the main campaign with their powers intact, despite some differences in each universe.
Players will ultimately have future knowledge of events that haven’t happened yet in each universe’s timeline, which can result in slightly different dialogue options with companions. Cut dialogue shared to the r/Starfield subreddit by Deebz__ showed that one of the options originally was to come clean about being a Starborn to companions, notably Barrett, who calls the player character out for behaving differently, and ultimately says he’d figured it out after players revealed the secret.
As pointed out by tobascodagama under Deebz__’s post, it does make sense Barrett would figure it out, going off one popular fan theory. This theory suggests that Barrett may actually be a Starborn in Starfield‘s main storyline, with him seemingly knowing more than he’s letting on throughout the first playthrough, and also being able to receive the Starborn power “Parallel Self” as part of the World’s Apart quest.
This also tracks with the fact that the opening dig in which players are working to find an Artifact is commissioned by Barrett, and he’s the one who turned Constellation on to them in the first place. He also seems to be fearless in certain situations with other factions, as if he knows how they’re playing out.
If this theory is true, Starfield‘s cut content would seem to back it up nicely by having Barrett recognize one of his own. It’s unclear why Bethesda opted to cut such a moment from the finished product, but maybe it could be saved as a story element in a future expansion, such as Shattered Space.
Source: Deebz__/Reddit, tobascodagama/Reddit