Starfield is without a doubt one of the most anticipated titles of the year. Todd Howard knows that too and gives us some more information about the new Bethesda role-playing game.
Todd Howard, Game Director of Starfield, was in the mood to chat again and answered questions from the community at Kinda Funny Games, again throwing out some interesting information on various topics related to the game.
For example, about romance. They are quite welcome in role-playing games, see The Witcher 3 or Mass Effect, where you could amorously delight some of your companions. According to Howard, there will also be romance in Starfield, but only four specific companions have full quest lines that also support romance. However, the relationship your companions have to you also plays a role, because your decisions will also have consequences in this regard. Difficult to start a romance when the person is pissed off at you.
On character creation at the start of the game, Howard says, “We’ve made a number of games with different character systems over the decades, and I think we’ve learned a lot in terms of how it feels when you start a game “What are the first decisions to make before understanding the actual rules of the game? How much depth does playing 20 hours, or 50 hours, or 100 hours, or 500 hours have? I think we hit a real sweet spot with Starfield by giving the player a certain flair right from the start where they can choose some starting skills with their background. But there’s also a certain appeal to that – people want roleplay, they don’t want to see it just as a list of numbers. “
Another exciting question are the procedurally generated planets, which should make up a not inconsiderable part of the scope of the game. Howard admits the team initially struggled with this, but gradually found a solution. Designing complete planets by hand was not possible. However, the team created individual locations by hand, which are also placed specifically and are not left to chance. Apparently, Bethesda wants to avoid making the planets feel too generic as much as possible.
About 10 percent of the planets should be home to life, several biomes on a planet are possible and the players should consider the environmental conditions. However, there will be no vehicles or mounts on the planets. Instead, players can use a boost pack and use low gravity to travel great distances.
And there’s good news for modders: “I think Starfield will be a modder’s paradise. It’s part of our DNA here – we’ve been doing this for over 20 years.” That’s actually not surprising – titles like Skyrim were kept alive for years by the extremely lively modder scene. Not to forget that a vibrant mod community can also bring to light the developers and collaborators of tomorrow.
What the modders apparently don’t have to worry about are the font sizes. After the presentation at Starfield Direct, there was some criticism regarding the small font sizes in relation to accessibility. However, Howard emphasizes that there will be larger font modes, also adapted to different screen sizes.
Bethesda presented the new sci-fi role-playing game extensively at Starfield Direct and the mass of features alone is literally overwhelming. Will either be a masterpiece or the greatest debacle of all time 😉
