Starfield: Everything You Need To Know About Game

The new game from Bethesda Game Studios is the most anticipated project in 2023. But what is known about this space adventure? What is the duration of Starfiled, how deep is the role-playing system, how many factions will there be, what will the battles be like - we will answer these and other questions in our material.

What platforms is the game coming out on and when?

Starfield is exclusive to the Microsoft ecosystem and is only available on Xbox Series X|S and PC. The final release date was announced in a recent trailer - September 6, 2023. At the same time, the game will appear on Xbox Game Pass, both on consoles and on PC - and this will be the largest launch in Microsoft's subscription service in its history.

The game will not be released on Sony consoles. Todd Howard, after the merger between Bethesda Game Studios and Microsoft, stated that it "will help create a better product" because it does not have to be torn between platforms. Considering that the game comes out on a PC, where the number of components is incalculable, the statement is debatable. 

The engine of the project is Creation Engine 2, which is based on the engine of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Fallout 4. Bethesda improved old developments and, in part, large delays in the release of new games are associated with the development of a new engine. The Elder Scrolls VI will also be built (or is already being built) on Creation Engine 2.

The background of the world and the plot of Starfield 

The development of events starts in 2310, when humanity has already left its native solar system and settled 50 light years from Earth. On the Settled Frontiers, a conflict broke out between two factions - the Freestar Collective and the United Colonies, and this event went down in history as the "War of the Colonies". According to available information, this war will continue in 2330, when the Starfield story starts.

The player will have access to the neutral region of the Settled Frontiers, where a “hard peace” was concluded, and the Constellation faction controls it - interaction with it was shown at the Xbox Games Showcase 2022 in a 15-minute gameplay video. The faction is peaceful and its goal is to explore the region, conduct research and discover the unknown. And they did something.

The protagonist of Starfield is a space miner who has discovered an unknown material in a mining rock. It turned out that this is an artifact that is broken into pieces. "Constellation" wants the protagonist to find all the pieces of the destroyed artifact - this can both reveal the secrets of the universe and answer people's questions on a galactic scale. At the same time, not only the main character will look for parts of the ancient machine, but also other factions that have learned about the existence of such a powerful thing.

The duration of the storyline in Starfield will be 30-40 hours, only if you follow the main quest and do not get distracted by additional tasks.

Character creation and role-playing

As with other Bethesda games, players will create the main character from scratch. Customize looks, distribute stats, but Starfield's character creation system is more like a tabletop version or an early RPG game.

The player is free to create a character's face from scratch or choose from the options already offered. They will allow you to choose the weight of the hero, gait and how NPCs will address the player. During the passage, they will also allow you to change the appearance of the character in the "genetical facility" - apparently, corporations will provide those who wish the opportunity to change themselves.

But the fun begins after the appearance is created - the player begins to choose the backstory of the character, which will form the class. There will be about 20 possible options that will allow you to assign the starting skills of the hero. Here are some of them.

• The chef will have the ability to cook special food, deal more melee damage and get a bonus 30 health points
• The Combat Medic gains more health from using medkits, can carry 10kg more, and deals 10% more damage with pistols
• The hacker will be able to pick improved locks from the start, convince people in "conversational tests" and inflict 10% more damage with the same pistols

Conversational Challenges is an attempt by the developers to reimagine the persuasion system from previous Bethesda games. Todd Howard, in one of the development diaries, explained the dialogue system as "an attempt to convince a real person of something." Head of Design Emil Pagliarulo also explained the idea behind the new persuasion system: "We didn't want to create a persuasion system where the player was looking for the only correct answer."

These words give hope that Bethesda has reinvented the dialogue system for computer role-playing games - there are more than 250 thousand lines of dialogue in Starfield. For comparison, Skyrim has 60,000 lines of dialogue, while Fallout 4 has 110,000.

After choosing a backstory, the player selects three hero traits from twenty available. Some exclude each other, while others change the position of the hero in society: the character will have his own house on a small planet, but will owe the galactic bank 50,000 credits; the hero's parents will be alive, they will be allowed to fly to visit and chat, but 10% of the credits received for tasks or found during travels are automatically transferred to their account; the hero will also be allowed to join religious sects or corporations, get a discount on their goods, but the rest will take up arms against him.

But leveling skills is similar to the merging of the role-playing systems of Fallout and The Elder Scrolls. The player gains experience by fighting, exploring, crafting, and completing missions, and upon reaching a new level, he invests a skill point in one of five development paths: physical condition, social skills, combat, science and technology.

Each of the tabs has 16-17 skills, but each one will be upgraded by several levels to increase the bonus to indicators or give the character new abilities. But they will have to be improved not by investing skill points, but by completing tests: kill 50 people with a sniper rifle so that the hero holds the rifle without shaking; change 150 empty magazines so that the character has a chance to reload weapons twice as fast; kill 250 people with heavy weapons to reduce damage by 30 points while aiming. In addition, each skill level is summed up with the previous one, which gives more bonuses.

Leveling up science and technology will come in handy for using research stations and crafting workbenches. Research stations unlock new recipes for crafting gear, food, and medicine mods. After that, on the workbench, it will be possible to install new body kits on weapons, and improvements on armor.

For crafting and research, you will need materials that will have to be mined on planets using mining equipment. So, one of the main goals of the hero will be the study of worlds and outer space.

Exploration of the galaxy

The region available for exploration will include hundreds of space systems and thousands of planets to visit. This is hardly possible to implement by the hands of developers, which means players are waiting for randomly generated space systems and planets. Perhaps Bethesda pre-generated the Starfield world and manually created tasks, pirate outposts, fauna and flora on the resulting planets - then everyone's world will be identical, except perhaps large. There is no exact information on this.

You will have to explore this hulk on your own spaceship - and even manage it. Both during peaceful flights from planet to planet, and during battles. The only thing that can not be done is to manually land the ship on the planet of interest, as in No Man's Sky. During landing, players will see a loading screen, and then a pre-made animation - this is also symmetrical for taking off from the planet.

However, it will be possible to land on the planet not only at pre-prepared points, but also on any part of the planet. Here are Todd Howard's words from the Starfield gameplay presentation: “ You can land in New Atlantis, but you can land and explore anywhere on the planet. And not only this one - this can be done on all the planets of the system: from barren, but rich in resources, to inhabited by life and built up by megacities .

Also at the presentation of the Xbox Games Showcase 2022, they noticed the level of the system - players will be artificially limited in the study of a neutral region. The same window contains information about the completion of the study of the system, and each planet will have its own list of features: type of terrain; gravity level; temperature; is it possible to breathe on it; how much flora and fauna; what type of liquid is common on the planet. The player will also have to scan plants and animals to complete the research level of the system.  

As mentioned above, on the planets you will also have to look for minerals and develop veins with mining equipment. These materials will be needed for: creating new weapons and armor, modifying equipment, building outposts on planets. Fauna and flora will also be needed - in cooking or creating medicines.

To explore the planets was not boring, or the character's skills require the presence of the company, Starfield will give the opportunity to collect a batch of companions. One has already been introduced - the Vasco robot, which can both protect the player and carry a heavy load.

You will also have to settle down on the planets - the construction of outposts on the planets was already mentioned a little higher. There is no exact information, but according to the developers, outposts will help "generate resources." So their construction is not a whim, as in Fallout 4, but the necessary game mechanics. True, you will also have to spend resources and time on the construction of such a structure - for example, hire management personnel or place companions at outposts. Most likely, they will also have access to workbenches and research laboratories.

Cities and factions

At the time of this writing, it is stated that Starfield will have four large metropolitan areas, and only three of them are publicly available.

New Atlantis is the headquarters of the Constellation. According to some information, the starting point or location that the character will enter at an early stage of the game. This city is considered a kind of capital of a neutral region, where peaceful life is concentrated - and the largest city that, according to Todd Howard, Bethesda created.

Neon is a pleasure city, one big red-light district where corporate tyranny and legal drug trafficking thrive. The Zenofresh Corporation built a floating fishing platform on the planet Neon, but the catch contained intoxicating substances - the corporation quickly turned the fish into a drug.

Akilla City is the headquarters of the Freestar Collective faction. Local devastation and houses sewn from pieces of metal, in fact, an attempt by the faction "to give people the opportunity to live the way they want to and express themselves." The city is surrounded by a wall and fortified with watchtowers to defend against the attack of the Asht - creatures that resemble a fusion of wolves and velociraptors.

The game has a faction "Ryujin" (from the English "Ryujen"), which is a haven for those who want to join the corporate conglomerate. This faction will also have a separate quest for joining its ranks, which will "test the player for strength." Apparently, we will have to prove that our character is ready to be a malicious corporation.

Another bad boy faction is the Blood Fleet. These are space pirates who are loyal to each other to the end. Those who want to leave this dangerous business will face death. But, the above-mentioned Starfield design director, Emil Pagliarulo, said an interesting detail - the Blood Fleet can be destroyed from the inside by infiltrating them undercover.

There are also three religious groups - "Enlightened", "Sanctum Universe" and "Embrace of the Serpent". Nothing is known about the first two, except that they are at enmity with each other. But the latter worship the deity, which is called the "Great Serpent".

Battles

Combat, like research, will take place in two forms - skirmishes on planets and in space.

You will have to fight on your own two feet not only against pirates, bandits, corporations or warring factions, but also against aggressive fauna on the planets. In the gameplay trailer, which shows the battles, you can see gunfights with aggressive space creatures in the open space and with mutants in the closed rooms of laboratories. Here Bethesda are true to themselves and will likely follow the beaten track of Fallout 4.

Not many weapons were shown: the Grendel submachine gun, the Trainer shotgun, the Equinox laser rifle, the AR-99 assault rifle, the unnamed semi-automatic pistol, and the Whirlpool machine gun.

No one interferes with sneaking up on opponents, but it seems that there will be no covert passage as such - it would look strange. A jetpack will also help in battle - the player will be allowed to fly up to a low altitude and fire at opponents from the air. The trailer also flashed a couple of shots of a battle in zero gravity - I want to believe that such battles will occur often and not only in the plot.

Battles on ships in space look slower than in other games - this was evident in the presentation of the gameplay. But, perhaps, the player will be able to independently regulate the maneuverability of the ship, redistributing power between different parts of the aircraft - turn off the shields and add firepower, or remove energy from the engines and escape from the next volley. A similar system was seen not so long ago in Star Wars: Squadrons, but in Starfield it will be fancy.

During battles in space, the player will also be allowed to board other space vessels! You will have to dock with an alien aircraft and get inside the besieged equipment along a special corridor. In this way, you can even steal someone else's ship - expanse for space pirates.

The ship and its improvement

Like building outposts, the ship also consists of modules that the player will have to buy from space stations, find, steal or create. Each ship module has a class and characteristics: to transport cargo, you will have to install cargo compartments with a large capacity; for long-haul flights, you will have to stock up on fuel, which means installing additional tanks. At the same time, the ship will look the way the player wishes - at least in one style, at least "sewn" from different pieces and modules.

Also, frames sometimes flashed where the team appeared on the player's ship. And it is not clear whether this is a separate and hired workforce, or partners, whom we will be looking for throughout the Neutral Region. There are no details on this yet.

Analysis

There is already so much information on Starfield that it seems that we know everything about it. However, this is only a grain of what will be in the game, according to the assurances of the developers. If the postponement to September 6, 2023 allowed us to keep the mechanics and features that we wrote about above, then it was necessary. After all, players are waiting for the "space Skyrim of dreams", where they will disappear for hundreds and thousands of hours. And, I want to believe, this time Todd Howard and his team will not be deceived, and Bethesda's ambitions will come true.