IN THE STARS
Bethesda’s “Skyrim in space” STARFIELD has been delayed to 2023
One of the examples Bethesda
offers is how a character can interact
with factions like the Crimson Fleet.
“The cool thing about the
Crimson Fleet is, what if you’re a
good person, a good player, and you
don’t want to play as the bad guy?”
says lead designer Emil Pagliarulo.
“You can side with the pirates or you
can report back to your superiors and
be basically a space-cop kind of thing,
so it lets you be a good person but
still play with the bad guys.”
Starfield will also feature
companions, and the first shown off
is Vasco: the Constellation faction’s
expeditionary robot. Art of Vasco
shows it fixing a ship’s underside,I
t’s official: Starfield is not
launching November 11 2022
as originally planned. It’s
instead now aiming at “the
first half of 2023”, according
to an official Twitter update.
Bethesda repeatedly claimed that the
game wouldn’t be delayed, but the
marketing has told a different story.
With a focus on developer waffle
over substantive reveals, the official
videos have been light on concrete
info. With only brief in-game clips
shown, it’s been hard to believe that
the game was only months way.
Director Todd Howard has
dubbed it “Skyrim in space”, but he’s
keen to emphasise that it aims to do
more with character customisation
than Skyrim did: “Some things we
didn’t do [in older games]: the
backgrounds, the traits, defining your
character, all of those stats... a lot of
the things that older hardcore RPGs,
something we used to do, doing those
again in a new way.”“YOU CAN SIDE WITH
THE PIRATES OR YOU
CAN REPORT BACK TO
YOUR SUPERIORS”A big feature will be a
new persuasion
system. “As far as new
systems in dialogue,”
says Howard, “I think
it’s definitely one of
the most successful
ones that we’ve had.”MONITOR
NEWS | OPINION | DEVELOPMENT