Starfield

Sandwiched between Fallout 76 and Elder Scrolls VI at the end of Bethesda's E3 presentation was the announcement of Starfield, which was confirmed as a single player sci-fi title and a new IP.

No release data or gameplay details yet.

Knowing the developer, I kind of hope we're in for The Elder Scrolls ... in space!

All we've got was that trailer showing a satellite floating around in orbit around a planet and little else. Not much to get hyped about sadly.

Agreed. Based on the rumors going around, I'd hoped for something much more substantial at E3.

The Star Wars mods for this game are gonna be so lit. It's making me shiver, with antici...

The game has been confirmed to be an Xbox and PC exclusive for the time being. An official release date is still a LOOOONG ways off though.

And so we now have a proper trailer.

The Washington Post has a pretty good interview that goes into a bit more depth than what was revealed during this year's E3 coverage.

It's still not much more to go on, since all we've got is a cinematic trailer with no gameplay shown and a few concept art images. But to quote Ashley Cheng, one of Bethseda's Managing Directors, "For me, Starfield is the Han Solo simulator. Get in a ship, explore the galaxy, do fun stuff." Todd Howard was describing it as "Skyrim in Space," and seems to be placing more emphasis than usual on the exploration and world-building aspects instead of conflict. Sounds like this game might actually play more like Elite: Dangerous, or - to drive even further how laughably ironic it's getting - Star Citizen, of all things.

Edited by SgtRicko on Jun 15th 2021 at 4:17:01 AM

...pation

New trailer giving insight into the setting, the Settled Systems

An ex-developer from Bethseda leaked a bit of information regarding Starfield's progress. And it's not some random gossip either; he's been confirmed to be legit by Jason Schreier, a well-respect tech and gaming journalist. The leaker's probably screwed himself over though, since this is likely in breach of his NDA...

Delayed into the first half of 2023.

Jason Schreier heard from one of the devs last year right before E3 that keeping to the 11/11/22 release date would have had the game launch in a Cyberpunk 2077 way.

So the leaker's assessments were correct.

Sucks that we won't be seeing it release this year, but from the sounds of things it's definitely for the better.

At least they're aware of the consequences of Cyberpunking it.

Finally, a gameplay reveal:

Edited by jormis29 on Jun 12th 2022 at 8:26:15 PM

Wow, except for the gunplay this is starting to look pretty awesome. Even cooler is how you can basically build your own starship out of various modules - an impressive feature by itself, but if it turns out to be mod-friendly as well? Hoo boy, I can't wait to see somebody's attempt at recreating the Millennium Falcon or the Rocinante!

We have confirmation that protagonist dialogue won't be voiced and will be in first-person

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Jun 13th 2022 at 10:11:22 AM

This.... This just looks like No Man's Sky meets The Outer Worlds

Edited by blkwhtrbbt on Jun 13th 2022 at 1:00:06 PM

This somehow feels like a step backwards, especially after several other AAA RP Gs managed to pull off voiced protagonists just fine. I mean, it’s not like the character creator allows species other than humans or (probably) any form of body augmentation that may alter one’s voice, so why not?

It's probably very expensive to pay multiple voice actors to voice the same (probably many) lines. It doesn't bother me at all.

Remember Fallout/ES fans are all about muh immersion

Hard disagree, voiced protagonists are good for the kinds of structured RP Gs like Mass Effect or The Witcher where the PC has an established background but for more free-form RP Gs like all of Bethesda's games they just limit the capability for roleplaying. Not to mention the practical costs of having to pay for a VO to read every single line.

For this kind of game it's very much a step forward.

Fallout 4 drew a lot of ire from modders as its voiced protagonist and dialogue system based around one made new dialogue nigh-impossible to mod in.

Edited by Arutema on Jun 13th 2022 at 7:52:26 AM

Of course one of Fallout 4's main criticism was that what the prompt said and what your character said often had nothing in common.

Yeah, it's worth emphasizing that even by the standards of voiced protagonists Fallout 4's execution was spectacularly bad. In Mass Effect I was almost never surprised by what Shepherd said, but it wasn't unusual for a conversation in 4 to have at least one line that was hopelessly vague.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Jun 14th 2022 at 12:03:02 PM

Yeah, I'd honestly consider it a positive for the protagonist not to be voiced for this type of game.

And, yeah, 4's choices could be awful at conveying what your character was actually going to say.

Glass him!

While truer for ME 1, ME 2 and ME 3 often had issues where the prompt did a poor job on the dialogue. Though to their defense, it often more had to do with tone, where often Sheppard would be more hostile or aggressive than the prompt seemed to imply. And tone is hard to convey in text.