Starfield Is ‘Skyrim In Space,’ Says Todd Howard

Image: Bethesda

Despite a much meatier performance at E3 2021 that his revelation three years ago, very little is known about Starfield, Bethesda’s next massive role-playing game, other than its release on November 11, 2022 for Xbox Series X / S and PC.

Todd Howard and other members of Bethesda Game Studios have been around promoting the game as much as they can, so it’s probably worth checking out what they’re saying to get a quick rundown of what Starfield could be, even. if they are not yet ready to discuss details.

What is Starfield?

“Well, it’s coming out next year, so there’s going to be a lot of time to show the actual gameplay, and we’ll be doing it closer to release, like we usually do,” Howard said. Telegraph. “But I’ll say this: it’s a first-person and third-person game, like our others. We love this style of play. First person for us is always our primary way of playing. So you can see the world and touch all of these things.

“It’s also a little more hardcore role-playing game than we did,” Howard added. “There are very good character systems: choosing your background, things like that. We’re going back to some things that we did in games a long time ago that we think really let players express the character they want to be. So I think when you see him play, you’ll recognize him as something we’ve done. “

Talk with The Washington Post, Howard and Ashley Cheng, CEO of Bethesda Game Studios, were more succinct, with the former calling Starfield “Skyrim in space” and the latter describing him as a “Han Solo simulator” after the popular mischievous smuggler of Star Wars.

What is the plot of Starfield?

Starfield, Howard continued, puts the players in the role of a new recruit to Constellation, an organization tasked with exploring space some 300 years into our future. The main character will start the game with a background selected by the player, and further customization of this past will impact the story of the game in ways not yet described. Howard also blurted out that a robot named Vasco (after Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama) will facilitate the player’s journey as one of many potential robotic companions.

“At first we struggled to find Starfield’s identity,” Howard told the Washington Post. “We knew the style of play we wanted. But there’s so much sci-fi that we didn’t have that sense of an existing franchise. We had to create this from scratch. What do spaceships look like? What is the technical level? What do people believe? What year is it really in? And now man lives among the stars: what does this mean?

Screenshot: Bethesda

What will the Starfield universe look like?

Oh, and yes, there will be lasers. And aliens. And explorable planets. But, again, Howard is low-key when it comes to the details.

Howard was very open, however, that Starfield was the culmination of decades of both personal and professional anticipation. Bethesda has long flirted with the genre – Howard specifically pointed out its brief ownership of rights to Traveler tabletop role-playing game and Star Trek properties to indicate where their heads have been in previous decades, but Starfield is the first time the company has truly applied its brand to a space adventure.

“It’s going to sound cliché, but I really mean it,” Howard said. “When you look up in the sky, there’s this urge to know, what’s there? Are we alone? What are the origins of space and time and all of those things? What role does religion play in some of these areas as well? So, we get into big questions. I think a game like [Starfield] is a good place to do it. There are movies and books that have done it too, but we haven’t seen a game do it that way. And we’ll see how successful we are.

Check Telegraph and The Washington Post for more discussion on Starfield.