game news That’s why Starfield is a dream come true!
Officially announced in 2018, Starfield will finally see the light of day in September 2023. A (very) long-term project. The idea of making a sci-fi game for Bethesda Studio has been around for more than twenty years.
Starfield, Bethesda’s famous space game, will be released on September 6th. In twenty years, the company has mostly relied on its flagship franchises, such as The Elder Scrolls or Fallout. However, the project has been in the planning for a long time. Todd Howard, head of the studio, recently commented on the subject Xbox showcase : “For decades we have been lucky enough to make the kind of titles we love (…) And in all this time we have often talked about and dreamed of the “space game”.
A dream for Bethesda, but also for Todd Howard himself, he says during an interview that was granted Washington Post in 2021, that By his teens, he had already created a title screen and characters for an interplanetary game. When he joined the creators of The Elder Scrolls in 1994, the desire to flesh out the project became ever more present. The company takes its cue from the space theme on several occasions, but so far none of the games have been really concrete or hugely successful.
Pull back to get better at blowing up
Chess beginning with software released the same year as Todd Howard’s arrival. This is Delta V, a first-person adaptation of the paper role-playing game “Traveler” for MS-DOS. The title is set in a future where mega corporations hire mercenaries to recover data that has become a new form of currency. The player embodies one of these pirates and has to steer a ship in all levels. Upon its release, next-generation media gave it a 2/5 rating.
We are entering a new millennium and the space race for Bethesda continues. This time the studio is busy with a big franchise of the seventh part: Star Trek. In fact, in an interview with the Washington Post, Todd Howard says: “At that time I started a role-playing game (from the license, editor’s note), but nothing concrete came of it”
“It must have been Starfield”
In September 2013, the Starfield project really begins to come to life. The name is registered by Bethesda and for Todd Howard “it had to be Starfield”. On the other hand, if the title is clear, the development will prove to be a bit more complicated. “At first we struggled to find the identity of the game. We just knew what style we wanted.” he says in an interview with the Washington Post. Everything had to be created from scratch. The studio even created a detailed timeline that included the story of “what happens in each decade.” Ultimately, the decision was made to start Starfield 300 AD. After five years, the project was finally revealed to the world at the 2018 E3 Bethesda conference.
However, the game still encounters some difficulties. The global pandemic actually halted development for several months. The original release date of November 11, 2022 is pushed back twice, finally ending up on September 6, 2023. Within a few months and after more than 30 years, Bethesda’s “space game” is – finally – becoming a reality.