Starfield, the upcoming role-playing game from Bethesda Game Studios, surely is one of the most anticipated games of all time. After all, the people behind it were also responsible for world-conquering games like Skyrim and Fallout 4, so expectations for the game are sky high as you can imagine.
There was much disappointment last year though, because Starfield missed its much publicized 11.11.21 release date, which would have put the sci-fi RPG’s launch exactly ten years after that of the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.
But at least we know that Starfield will be arriving sometime in the first half of 2023, and is one of the most eagerly anticipated games releasing next year no doubt.
And in order to whet gamers’ appetites, Bethesda recently released another one of its Constellation videos, providing details about Starfield’s quests, factions and companions.
As the game’s lead quest designer Will Shen explains, the game’s main quest takes players to our good old solar system early in order to discover Earth’s fate as part of a mission for Constellation. This is an organization the main character is part of, and which is attempting to unlock the mysteries of the universe (or something like that…).
There’s more to Starfield’s main quest, though, according to Shen.
“Also, you’ll go to Mars and there’s actually a settlement, one of the early settlements that humanity created after they left Earth. It’s called Cydonia. And that’s a whole city with its own problems and people to meet”, said the Bethesda man.
This certainly sounds great, as prior Bethesda games like Fallout 4 also had interesting cities populated by colorful characters you could interact with.
Starfield, though, will differ from Fallout 4 in the fact that its faction quests will work more like those in Skyrim, meaning you won’t be locked out of joining one faction just because you’re doing another’s dirty work. Also, the main quest does give you a bit of a taste of everything according to Shen.
“So, one of the early things we decided on was making sure that the main quest actually kind of gives you a little bit of a tour of the settled systems and all of the major players there so that we can give you a taste of what they’re going to be up to”, Shen says in the above video. “We decided we really want to make sure that you can play through all the faction lines independently of each other”, added the Bethesda designer.
You can push factions in one direction or the other – for instance, the Freestar Collective seems to have trouble choosing between “justice or industry” for whatever reason, but Shen says you won’t necessarily end the game as the leader of every faction available in Starfield.
There’s also the matter of companions: as in earlier Bethesda games, there’ll be characters who will travel with you. Bethesda’s games have featured many memorable characters over the years – it’s hard to forget characters like Skyrim’s Lydia or Fallout 4’s Piper.
And it seems companions in Starfield will be an opinionated lot: according to Shen they’ll be expressing their points of view about your decisions in the game’s main quest. There are also moments in the game at which NPCs accompanying will be able to talk to speak in your name, although Shen points out that “there could be consequences, good or bad, for what they have to say”.
Also, they’ll be part of the crew of your spaceship, something new in Starfield relative to other Bethesda RPGs.
All in all, Starfield is definitely looking like it could be another gem of a game from Bethesda judging by this video. And with millions of gamers the world over eager to get their hands on the sci-fi RPG, it would be a good thing if it lives up to the hype when it ships sometime next year.