Bethesda Game Studios (BGS) have spoken again about Starfield, dropping more snippets of juicy information for us to analyze.
Starfield is an upcoming space epic from Bethesda Game Studios, world renowned creators of The Elder Scrolls and modern Fall-Out games. Starfield, unlike The Elder Scrolls, is designed in a more ‘real life, science based’ setting and is set to launch on the 11/11/22.
On November 30th 2021, BGS released a 7-minute video discussing their games, what they love about their games, and what fans can expect moving forward with Starfield and beyond. The full video can be found below, for those that want to watch. In true Todd Howard style, we have more cryptic snippets to talk about as BGS move into full Starfield marketing mode moving to 2022. I will go through key moments from this video in chronological order.
Point one, and Todd gets into it within about 30 seconds of the video. Starfield (and hopefully the next Elder Scrolls & Fallout) will have heavier RPG mechanics… Todd Howard hints that one of these will be choice and consequence. “Even though we want to make a game that is very big, and very long, you can play for all those years. It’s all those paths you didn’t take, that make it special to you. That when you finish that quest, you feel like you accomplished something that week”. The opening to the video here is celebrating what we love about BGS games, but I want to home in on “…It’s all the paths you didn’t take…”. Based on what we have already been told about Starfield having heavier RPG mechanics, the phrase ‘paths you didn’t take’ suggests a level of choice and consequence within questlines. This is something I am very excited about as, despite all it’s strengths, this is something BGS had started to go softer on for Skyrim and Fallout 4.
My second point comes straight after with Matt Carofano, Art Director at BGS, discussing the team at BGS. How they are a tightly knit group that have worked together a long time. He leads into Angela Browder, Studio Director, talking about their recruitment strategy. “This new generation of game developers coming in working at BGS, who grew up on these games those people (older BGS employees) made… What I love about that is they love those worlds too, and they want to stay true to those worlds they grew up on. So we are still able to maintain what a BGS game is, but continue to evolve.” Todd Howard touched on this too, in his interview with IGN’s Ryan McCaffery (a great interview by the way) discussing recruitment. In that interview, (I’m paraphrasing here) when speaking about creation club content, Todd said that BGS use the modding community for their recruitment. Something re-enforced in the video above. This is important to all their future games and shows understanding how mods have helped given past games their longevity, it is a very clever recruitment strategy and bodes well for all the lore freaks out there (including me).
It segues very nicely into the next point for us, point 3. BGS are heavily hinting at mod support for Starfield and future games. “I feel like our games have two lives. We create this game and we put everything we can possibly put into it, and tell the stories we want to tell, and build this world that is sort of a setup, that when we hand it off to the players they play it, but then they take it and make it their own. They tell their own stories, and then they make their own stories with our tools.” BGS has come under scrutiny for their reliance on mod support based on the same bugs appearing across multiple games. I personally feel the pros far outweigh the cons. BGS recognise that this modding community is what gives their games the life, longevity, fanbase and depth. It keeps their games relevant ten years on and builds the IPs into some of the biggest, if not THE biggest names in gaming. For example, there are YouTube channels out there with over one million subscribers that produce Elder Scrolls and Fallout content almost exclusively. That shows strength in IP.
Onto point number four… A theory I came up with back in June, it is a but of a tin foil hat theory from me, apologies… Okay I need you guys to stick with me for just a second. In the above video, Todd Howard says, “Going to space there is a magic in just, defying gravity and taking off from a planet. It’s an extremely difficult human endeavour.” This and Matt Carofano saying “it’s got a more realistic, science based backing to it.” Now I know that in order to make a game as detailed as possible and to help with building of in game lore and mechanics, a fair level of research will have gone into this game. When I heard the Todd Howard quote, it immediately reminded me of something I have heard Elon Musk say, almost word-for-word. What a lucky coincidence that Todd Howard has a friendship with SpaceX’ Elon Musk… This was mentioned in Ryan McCaffery interview with Todd Howard, but also seen at E3 2019 in a show with Geoff Keighley. Knowing that Todd Howard likes “two years of pre-production” for his games, coupled with his omission of having been to Space X, I am convinced that BGS would leverage this relationship for the benefit of the game. And I think there will be an Elon or Space X feature or Easter-egg in Starfield.
And finally; Once they finish discussing Starfield using science as its backing, they begin to talk about the mechanics of the world being “entirely different”. Todd then goes on to say, “there are similarities”. i.e The mechanics that make BGS games unique and as immersive as they are staying… So it begs the question… Which mechanics? Role play? Perhaps flight? I think flight mechanics is definitely one of the ‘different’ mechanics. We’ve not seen such a thing in any previous BGS game that I can think of which explains the different… For me it was all but confirmed when Todd Howard said, (when talking about BGS games) “they always have that ‘step-out’ moment into the world… I like to say that Starfield has two ‘step-out’ moments, that’s cryptic”. One will be a standard, stepping out into the world on the planet you start on, right? Which means the second one would be the step out of the atmosphere, and into outer space…? I know I’m not alone with this theory, but does anyone have any different theories?
That was a fair bit to un-pack from a seven-minute video. I LOVE talking about Bethesda Game Studios games. My hype (like many people’s) for this game is out of this world. I am truly thinking of creating a running article that collates information and speculation for each BGS game and updating it with each new info drop. What do you think about this latest bit of Starfield info? Would you like it if I made a BGS information collation and speculation page? Let me know anything in the comments section or on Social Media.
