Starfield, the upcoming open-world sci-fi RPG by Bethesda, is continuing its trickle of information before its release with the second episode of their roundtable video series, Into the Starfield. In the first episode, the team revealed their ambitions for what’s shaping up to be an epic of a game.
In this new episode, titled Made For Wanderers, Game Director Todd Howard, Design Director Emil Pagliarulo, Lead Quest Designer Will Shen, and Lead Artist Istvan Pely introduce the various factions peppered throughout the sprawling world.
“We want all the personal interactions with NPCs, other characters in the game to be as impactful as possible,” Pely said, “And for that you have to believe these are real people, you’re a real person, and you’re interacting with real people.”
The factions include the United Colonies, which is an idealised picture of a futuristic space republic, the Freestar Collective, which is a faction that mixes sci-fi with the classic Western aesthetic, Ryujin Industries, which is a corporate-centric faction, and the Crimson Fleet, the sci-fi pirates.
The key here is player choice. The player can choose which faction to side with and which to fight or to avoid. To further the realism of the game and the believability of the world, Starfield boasts a new dialogue system that can be seen as an evolution of the one from The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.
“We didn’t want it to be a system where there is definitely a right thing to say,” Shen explained. Howard elaborated that “it feels like you’re having a conversation where you’re actually trying to persuade somebody of something. As far as new systems in dialogue go, I think it’s definitely one of the most successful ones we’ve had.”
If Starfield lives up to all the hype, this could be the next milestone in terms of the open-world RPG genre. Bethesda’s Starfield is expected to launch on 11 November 2022, and we will find out if the game delivers on that front.,
Brandon shapeshifts between being a nerd and a geek like Mystique, but with fewer options. He reads an unhealthy amount of comics and manga, while playing a healthy amount of board games and video games.
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