This is the game that Bethesda has been thinking about and dreamily planning for 25 years: a massive role-playing game that takes place not just in one world, like the multi-million-selling Fallout and Skyrim titles, but in an entire galaxy of over 1,000 detailed planets. In a 40-minute video presentation during Sunday’s Xbox Showcase in Los Angeles, the development team, working under the direction of director Todd Howard, detailed their wildly ambitious project—so many details!
You play as a member of Constellation, a famous group of space explorers who have discovered a strange artifact that hints at an ancient alien intelligence, maybe even a god. This is the main quest line, but players can also discover a number of side quests and mini-missions that are performed by a number of non-player characters. The game begins in the utopian city of New Atlantis, located on Alpha Centauri, but as the game progresses, you move further and further away from the peaceful United Colonies and into the territory of the Independent Star Systems Coalition, the frontier of cyberpunk worlds. Beyond those boundaries are uncharted spaces teeming with hostile factions.
Combat was the main focus, and the team aimed to improve the sometimes floaty bullet-sponge of the RPG shootout. This is something that Xbox boss Phil Spencer was keen to point out: “I’ve worked on some of the bigger sci-fi RPGs in the past and I’ve always felt that the gunplay wasn’t always what I wanted it to be in the game. But Starfield really plays well as action game, even though it’s such a deep RPG, and I really like it.” It promises fast, solid first-person shooter-style encounters with shotguns, SMGs, sniper rifles, and energy weapons. Space battles are also very important. One can attack and board other ships, fight the crew, and eventually claim the ship and all its contents as one’s own.
Deep personalization is a key element. Players have access to a massive set of character creation tools (apparently the same technology the developers used to create the game’s non-player characters) that allow for sophisticated control over appearance and clothing, with Bethesda scanning dozens of real faces from all ages and ethnicities. for correct skin tones and features. There are different backgrounds to choose from, such as combat medic, diplomat, or chef, so you can create a character bio, while traits like introversion and empathy color your interactions with NPCs.
Weapons and spaceships can also be customized, adding hundreds of different enhancements and aesthetic touches. During the launch, Bethesda showed off one craft designed to resemble a giant mech. As you explore the galaxy, you can also build personalized outposts on any planet you like. These can be houses, but also mines, equipped with your own AI crew to collect the planet’s resources while you do other work.
The base building is very reminiscent of UK studio Hello Games’ space exploration epic No Man’s Sky, and that’s certainly not the only similarity between the two games, which was perhaps inevitable given their shared theme of planetary exploration. In Starfield, players can use a laser to extract resources from the environment, scan native life forms to gather zoological data, and analyze planets from orbit to find out their mineral content.
But, of course, Starfield adds that richness of narrative threads that Bethesda provides. It’s also a tighter, more realistic universe. The designers call the aesthetic “Nasa punk,” combining the chunky, analog romance of early space exploration with sci-fi craft that looks dented and weathered. From menacing cityscapes to rolling alien landscapes teeming with flora, detail is a common theme, even if there was a controversial trade-off: the game will run at 30 fps, angering some gamers who doubled the framerate from the Xbox series. But it’s hard to complain when you see things like real-time global illumination, which dynamically colors a planet’s light levels based on its position relative to the sun and the chemical composition of its atmosphere.
In a year where Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom gave players a massive quest, Starfield is a massive black hole in the game that will step in and warp time. But the point, Howard says, is to give players the choice to pursue the experience they want and contribute to the universe. “We like to make games that reward players for their investment of time,” he says. “We want to give people that freedom. This is what makes video games special as entertainment. We feel with Starfield that, more than anything we’ve done, the more you give, the more it gives back.