Viewers of this week’sStarfieldDirect had the opportunity to listen to Todd Howard and his cadre of senior developers flaunt their upcoming creation from the gleaming white Bethesda offices in Maryland.
TheDirectshowed a surprising level of depth, giving us a feel for Starfield’s core systems and a pretty clear picture of what to expect from the upcoming RPG.
With the video clocking in at around 45 minutes, it can be a lot for someone to take in. We’ve gone over the video, breaking down everything that was revealed during the event. From exploration to combat to factions to companions, Bethesda covered all bases over the weekend.
Exploration & Base Building
According to Howard’s voice-over, Starfield will feature “over a thousand worlds.” These worlds will be procedurally generated on the fly. As the player approaches a planet, the world will be stitched together and populated with dynamic occurrences, like points of interest, creatures, quests and people.
The planets in Starfield will be stocked with resources that you can scan and eventually harvest. You’ll also be able to build an outpost “almost anywhere on any planet” to facilitate this. Crew members can then be assigned to outposts which will change how they operate depending on that crew member’s traits.
Almost everything will be explorable. If you see a moon orbiting the planet you’re exploring, rest assured, you’ll be able to visit that moon. As you traverse space, you’ll also encounter non-planetary locations like Star Yards or gigantic battleships that you’ll be able to board and explore.
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The Direct also gave us our first look at Starfield’s star map. You’ll be able to choose a landing point on each planet or alternatively, you can directly fast-travel to points of interest if required. A large proportion of the planets will be barren and resource-heavy, perfect for an outpost. If a location is light years away then you’ll need to utilise your grav drive to travel there, gating some of the game behind how powerful your ship is.
Speaking of outposts, Bethesda has levelled up its game sinceFallout 4’s occasionally frustrating base-building system. You’ll now be able to enter an isometric top-down view while building to get a sense of the overall layout of your outpost-to-be. This is accompanied by the regular first-building mode that we’ve seen previously.
We also saw a lot of natural wildlife during the stream. They range from cute to downright horrifying, much like real life.
Character Customisation
Starfield features a new and improved character creation system that Bethesda believes is their best yet. Each of the NPCs that you encounter during the game has been created using the same technology, so every character should be re-creatable.
The in-game explanation for the character creator is that the player is an employee of Argos Extractors and is identifying themselves to colleagues. You’ll be flicking through employee IDs to choose a preset and eventually finalise your character’s appearance.
Then, you’ll be asked to choose a background and traits, with the latter being optional. As you can imagine, backgrounds and traits will affect starting skills, influence dialogue options, interactions, random encounters and so on. For example, choosing an option that has your character being of a certain faith may help you avoid conflict with fellow believers down the line.
There’s also a trait that enables you to encounter and recruit a recreation of Oblivion’s infamous Adoring Fan, and he acts exactly as you’d expect him to.
Combat-wise, Bethesda has said they’ve made fighting far more dynamic and fluid than in their previous games. The animations are certainly new, and the combat looked more interesting than we’ve come to expect from a Bethesda RPG.
Like Fallout 4, weapons will be fully customizable and you’ll be able to load them with different ammo types for different effects. For example, explosive ammo will cause… explosions.
Starfield will employ a skill tree system, with five different skill trees packed with individual skills. Each of these skills will then have four ranks that can be unlocked by completing challenges related to that specific skill. During the Direct we saw a high physical spec character punch his way through combat and a boost-packing explosives expert rain landmines from above.
Space combat is also in Starfield, and you’ll be able to dogfight with your spaceship. The Direct touched on a power allocation system where you’ll need to pick and choose how much power you’re directing towards each part of the ship. Diverting power to the engines will allow you to go faster, power to the weapons will make you hit harder and so on.
We also saw that different space suits have different stats.
Companions
We saw several of the available companions during the Direct. The majority of those on show were members of Constellation, the mythic group of space explorers that the player character ends up becoming involved with.
There’s Sarah Morgan, an ex-soldier and Constellation’s leader. Matteo, a theologian. Noel is a gifted scientist and the protege of Sarah. Walter is a successful businessman and Constellation’s financier. Then you have Vlad, an ex-pirate and Sam Koe, a space cowboy. Barrett the ship engineer rounds out the cast from Constellation. We briefly got a look at Monika Boros, a gun for hire and Heller, a character you appear to meet while exploring.
There’s also Vasco, a robot that can help in the field and can say your name. Presumably, this works like Fallout 4’s Codsworth where there is a list of names the voice actor recorded.
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As with Fallout 4, you’ll be able to build friendships with these characters that can eventually lead to romance depending on the character. During that segment of the Direct, Sarah and Sam Koe appeared on-screen, meaning those two are likely romance candidates. Companion quests are also returning.
As previously mentioned, each companion has traits. You’ll be able to assign companions to your ship or an outpost and “things will run differently” at these locations depending on the traits of the assigned companion.
Narrative & Lore
New Atlantis is the biggest city that Bethesda has ever created and is located in the Alpha Centauri system. The city is a part of the United Colonies, the pre-dominant colonisation organisation. The UC’s biggest mining colony is Cydonia on Mars.
There’s also a more anarchic coalition of systems known as Freestar Collective Space. The capital of this coalition is Akila City which seems to be modelled after a space western. Another member of Freestar is Neon, a fishing platform turned lawless pleasure city.
There are plenty of unclaimed systems, too. We briefly saw a flash of other locations, like The Key, headquarters of the Crimson Fleet.
There appears to be a group of religious zealots that follow something called ‘The Great Serpent’. You may be able to choose a trait that allows the player character to follow this religion, as well.
We learned a bit more about Constellation. By the time the events of Starfield take place, the group is mythical with some believing they no longer exist. They are trying to solve unanswered questions about humanity and the universe.
Miscellaneous
We’ve already gone deeper into the shipbuilding mechanicshere. Essentially, ships are fully modular, allowing you to build potentially anything. This includes giant mechs.
Starfield will have “real-time global illumination” based on the type of star that lights the planet.
Bethesda is pursuing a “lo-fi rather than sci-fi” aesthetic with the player’s ship, with everything looking a bit beat-up and well-used rather than the pristine white we’ve come to expect from the genre.
The Collector’s Edition of Starfield will feature a replica of the in-game Constellation Explorer’s Watch that can connect to your phone and feed information to you. The watch’s case is inspired by cases from the Apollo Era of space travel. Also set for release are Starfield variants of both the Xbox controller and Xbox headset.
Phew, take a breath. That’s just about everything we learned from the Direct. Starfield releases September 6 on PC and Xbox Series X/S.
