This information comes straight from Lead Quest Designer of Starfield Will Shen.
Starfield is Bethesda’s next big IP that has promised to shake up the genre. The gameplay trailer for the title released 6 months ago to quite a surprisingly tepid response, many still possibly trepidations considering the reaction to Bethesda’s last major release in Fallout 76.
In the most recent addition in the ‘Constellation Questions’ series, on the official Bethesda Youtube Channel, Lead Quest Designer Will Shen highlights some of the new things that we can expect in Starfield.
One of the first things mentioned is to do with the faction questlines and how they will work with Shen stating that: “We also discussed really early on, like ‘okay, do we make some of the factions in conflict with each other’, and we decided we really want to make sure that you can play through all the faction lines independently of each other”.
This is more akin to Skyrim than Fallout with the factions managing to be a little more disjointed from the rest of the story. There was also a discussion regarding a return to our solar system (Called the Old Neighbourhood in-game) and to discover what happened to Earth which Shen remarked “Very early on we take you to our Solar System.”
Something particularly interesting that Shen mentions is to do with random encounters, something of a staple in modern open world video games. Of course in Starfield players can explore entire planets and as Shen stated that “We Have entire planets that we have to populate” and he went on to further state that the technology will “take whole locations” and place them on these ‘random’ planets leading to a very dynamic system that supposedly can generate entire locations and quests on the fly. It seems an ambitious idea and one that would definitely reward exploration and discovery, something that this game appears to be heavily focusing on.
Lastly, there was a discussion regarding companions and their impact on a players’ experience. Shen stated that companions “Have opinions” and as such can remark regarding your decisions. Shen also mentioned that players can have the companions “Speak for you” a system that has been implemented in many modern RPG’s, Dragon Age Inquisition for one springs to mind, but Shen also says that these companion interjections are not going to direct conversations the way you want every single time.
Are you excited about Starfield? Or are you still cautiously optimistic? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below.
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