This year's E3 2019 is turning out to be full of surprising faces. If Keanu Reeves showing up at Microsoft's press conference wasn't enough, it looks like SpaceX CEO Elon Musk will also be making a guest appearance to talk about our place among the stars – but what does that have to do with games?
Specifically, Musk will be in conversation with Bethesda director and video game designer Todd Howard, who you may know from such bestselling franchises as Fallout, The Elder Scrolls, and the yet-to-be-released Starfield: a single-player sci-fi RPG set in space.
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Musk is a vocal fan of video games, and even issued a callout to video game designers on Twitter to apply to develop games for his fleet of Tesla cars. Some casual Twitter banter with Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford may also have led to a Musk-inspired flamethrower in the upcoming Borderlands 3 game.
The talk between Musk and Howard is set to kick off at 12pm PT, Thursday 13 June. There's little information in advance, other than that they'll be discussing "Video games, cars, space, and everything in between."
But why?
Starfield seems like an obvious talking point, though we've heard little about the game so far, and we'd be surprised if Howard gave too much away during the conversation.
But Musk's presence suggests he may be involved in a consulting capacity, or possibly – in the vein of Keanu Reeves in Cyberpunk 2077, or Norman Reedus in Death Stranding – even end up lending his likeness to the title.
We know that Bethesda is focusing on Starfield for now – rather than Elder Scrolls 6 – and this may be a way of starting to build up hype for the game, especially after the terrible PR storm around Fallout 76.
As two people both exploring the final frontier in very different ways, it's a fascinating overlap of interest to be hosting at E3, which tends to focus more on representations of fantastical environments rather than the people actually taking us there.
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