Starfield is "like Skyrim in space" or a "Han Solo simulator"
Never tell me the odds
Bethesda's upcoming space RPG Starfield bagged itself a release date last night (November 11th 2022, in case you missed it), but we still don't know a whole about what we'll actually do in it. In a recent interview, executive producer Todd Howard said "it's like Skyrim in space", though I doubt that means exploring draugr-filled asteroids. Slightly more interestingly, Bethesda's managing director Ashely Cheung compares it to Star Wars.
"For me, Starfield is the Han Solo simulator. Get in a ship, explore the galaxy, do fun stuff," he says.
This comes from an interview with The Washington Post, though I'm not sure this implies we'll be playing as a roguish smuggler, so much as it suggests that Starfield will give us a good level of freedom.
Howard goes on to explain that Starfield will have players join Constellation (who're also name-dropped in the new trailer above), an organisation composed of the last space explorers. When you start Starfield, you'll choose a character background "with many options for customization that will impact how some things in the game unfold."
I'm hoping it'll be less like Skyrim in that regard, where the main impact from your character creation choices is how much racism you receive from the nords. Perhaps it'll be a little more like Mass Effect, where your background can give you unique dialogue choices and missions.
"We struggled at first at finding Starfield's identity," Howard adds. "We knew the style of game we wanted. But there's so much science fiction, we didn’t have this existing franchise feel. We had to create that from scratch. What do the spaceships look like? What’s the tech level? What do people believe? What year is it really set in?"
There are some other interesting titbits in WaPo's article, about Bethesda's experience during the Covid-19 pandemic, how parts of the new trailer are an homage to NASA, and they've gotten ahold of some excellent concept art too. Howard even mentions that Starfield would be "a great world to put a show in" - but please Todd, I'd like a video game first.
E3 2021 may be over but our memories live on - see everything on our E3 hub. Many more big game showcases and streams are still to come this summer, leading up to Gamescom, so see our summer games stream schedule to stay up to date.