Starfield is one of the giant video games that figures like Phil Spencer (Xbox CEO), Todd Howard (Director of Bethesda) and even Elon Musk (Starlink, Tesla) can't stop talking about. The Bethesda team defines their new narrative as “NASA-punk”, where they are striving to build an open world with distinct aspects of classic RPGs.
Behind the aesthetic and technical development, the adventure aims to represent a new paradigm in the ninth generation that has already published information from formal consultancies with members of NASA and Starlink, in addition to the participation of more than 300 voice actors.
Bethesda Games Studios (under the umbrella of Microsoft) is planning an adventure that combines the first-person gameplay of the Fallout and a high level of immersion achieved through systems of interaction with NPCs and character customization.
What is Starfield all about?
“Our game is set in 2330, in a relatively small corner of the Milky Way, in an area that stretches outward from our solar system for about 50 light years,” said Emil Pagliarulo, design director of Bethesda Games Studios in its Development Episodes.
During the 20 years before the start of the main story, two major factions called The United Colonies and Freestar Collective were intertwined in a war for the colonization of space. But when the players come to the reality of the game, those battles were resolved in a present where tense peace is breathed.
In this reality, the Constellation organization has the mission of bringing together all kinds of recruits to explore space entropy and it is from here that the main protagonist will start playing.
What are the factions of Starfield?
Among all the advances, Bethesda also described that there will be a system of factions whose past will be key to narrative development. Players must choose to be part of The United Colonies, Freestar Collective, The Crimson Fleet, The Xenofresh Corporation, SysDef and Vanguard, MAST, Ryujin Industries or Constellation.
Each faction has a particular style that will provide the main context of the character, but you can also select which group to respond to as the story progresses.
Todd Howard, director of the project, specified that the rest of the factions will not only be enemies, but that it will also be necessary to work with diplomacy to navigate space (even as a double agent!).
Locations of the future
Artist Istvan Pely (Lead Artist in Starfield) described that they sought a more realistic and science-faithful scenario, where Sci Fi reality is a projection of the present rather than dystopia built in Fallout.
The stages are divided into New Atlantis (capital of United Colonies), the faction that represents strategic political and military power. This location will be a key capital for all races in the universe.
Neon was also presented, a platform built by The Xenofresh Corporation, which functions as an important port and main source of a space fish with psychotropic properties.
Finally, Akila (capital of Freestar Collective) has been shown, a region that unifies three star systems and the law is drawn with the politics of the measurement of each character.
How do you create a character in Starfield?
With Bethesda's expertise in customizing protagonists, Starfield is almost assured of endless features to customize the characters that players will manage.
“The background, the characteristics, what defines the character, all those statistics. I think there are so many games now that do that that people are already ready for something that does things in a more hardcore RPG way, as we used to do... so it would be to do that, but in a new way,” said Todd Howard, director of Bethesda.
While this space adventure is quite far removed from the paradigm that The Elder Scrolls also introduced, Howard believes that the kind of details offered by this experience need to be highlighted again. “It's a first-person and third-person game, like our other games,” he described.
The director pointed out that Starfield's main objective is to fulfill an organic narrative, but always maintaining a style of gameplay that does not reduce the story.
The “new” old dialogue system
According to Howard's guidelines, Starfield's system of dialogue and persuasion will have a system similar to The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. In this title (similar to those developed by BioWare), you could choose through an option wheel to interact with NPCs in order to shape certain missions or learn parts of the story.
While the developers have detailed that the system will not be exactly the same, they have been inspired by it for the construction of the narrative. But dialogues with companions will not always be motivated, as Starfield will also average the backgrounds of each NPC to generate specific dialogues.
“I think that's my favorite part, when you're exploring and your partner makes an unexpected comment about something you're checking or something that just happened,” added Will Shen, Lead Quest Designer.
In this way, Starfield is built in a comprehensive way by key players in the industry. The creators of Starfield have emphasized that their space adventure will not be influenced by Star Wars or Star Trek (N. of R: although it is impossible to deny its resemblance to the Mass Effect trilogy).
The new Bethesda title will arrive on November 11 on Xbox Series X/S and PC, and will be available from day one on Xbox Game Pass.
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