Bethesda’s upcoming space adventureStarfieldhas been making a lot of waves recently. Initially slated for a late 2022 release, the game became another victim of development delays and its launch was pushed back into 2023. Fans don’t necessarily have to panic, though, as the developer usedthe recent Xbox and Bethesda Games Showcaseto show off a hefty chunk ofStarfieldand do a deeper dive into its features, showing that the game is coming along nicely. As well as giving players a look atStarfield’s gameplay for the very first time, the showcase allowed the developer to go into more detail about what the game is actually about.
While there are plenty of sci-fi games that may have a premise that’s similar toStarfield’s, Bethesda’s newest IP does set itself apart for several reasons. It is undoubtedly far more ambitious than a fair few of its space-faring counterparts, with over a hundred systems and a thousand planets to explore. However, the main reasonStarfieldstands alone is the fact that it will examine humanity’s first explorations into space as they try to establish their foothold among the stars, which is something not a lot of other sci-fi titles feature.
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What Starfield Is All About
Bethesda has made no secret about the fact thatStarfieldis first and foremost a game about exploration. It is a concept that affects everything from the gameplay to the characterization and is a major component of the game’s player-driven story. There’s obviously been a great deal of attention paid toStarfield’s design, not only because of the work needed to address the vast scope of the game but also because of the commitment to realism and design. According to a recent report, it has beensuggested that Todd Howard neglectedFallout 76in favor of the upcomingStarfield, showing the game’s significance within the studio.
Starfield’s realism isn’t just in its designsthough. Bethesda seems keen to include this element in other features of the game, like its representations of different space-faring communities.Starfieldwants to ask questions about how human societies would carve a niche for themselves in a new and intensely challenging environment, and what humans in space would actually look like. The game is attempting to present – perhaps for the first time in a major title in this genre – a more realistic version of a sci-fi future for humanity.
Sci-fi Games And The Exploration Of Space
Space is obviously a very popular setting for sci-fi games, but how these different titles approach it can vary. In the vast majority of games that feature humans in space, there are already established colonies, systems, and societies that may be new to the player, but that aren’t new to the people that live there.Games in series likeDead Space,Borderlands, andDestinyfall into this category, where humans have already found a home for themselves and in some cases have done so for millennia. This isn’t to say that there aren’t still new places to find or things to discover, but for the most part, there isn’t a question about how humans will be able to sustain themselves out in space.
There are, of course, lots of variations. While theMass Effectgames mostly take place in a Milky Way where humans are an integrated part of the galactic community, they are still trying to find their proper place within it. Humans are a fairly new feature among the other races, and players can learn a lot about the first journey of humanity beyond the confines of their solar system in the lore that’s dotted around the game.Mass Effect: Andromedatakes a very different approach, but humans and the Milky Way races that travel with them to the new galaxy have a shared history, and the Andromeda Galaxy is already populated with established sentient aliens.
The fresh-out-the-box feel of humanity’s antics in space thatStarfieldhas seems pretty singular. Players can find unexplored planets in games likeNo Man’s Skyor establish new colonies in titles likeEVE Online, but they don’t have quite the samethematic focus asStarfield. There’s an excitement toStarfield’s air of discovery, but there’s also danger around what humans might find out in the galaxy, or even what they might find out about themselves.
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Where Starfield Could Go
Although Bethesda has started to open up aboutStarfield, large parts of the game still remain a mystery. Players know that they’ll be able to create their very own interplanetary traveler and choose a background for them that will affect where and how they’ll begin the game. There are also details of the various factions that gamers can choose to associate themselves with, and these also give an insight into how Bethesda has chosen to shapeStarfield’s communities. Society in the game is clearly fractured, withrogue factions like the Crimson Fleetand independent groups like the Freestar Collective vying for their own survival.
Gamers know that the largestgroups withinStarfield’s societyhave had a decades-long war that has since come to an end by the time the game’s action takes off. However, this conflict will no doubt shape the worlds that the player will encounter and shows that trying to survive in space and spread humanity’s influence across the stars can have more than a few complications. Although players will be launched intoStarfield’s universe with its known characters, groups, and areas, it still feels as if players will be having a hand in establishing humanity’s fate and discovering new elements of the systems.
Starfieldwill take place in the Settled Systems, an area of fifty light-years that extends outwards from Earth. While that seems like a contrast tothe realism thatStarfieldseems to be striving forin the other elements of the game, it can still offer up a grounded and complex exploration of how humans strive to live in space. Unlike so many other games with similar themes, settings, and storylines,Starfielddoesn’t appear to have a long-established galaxy for players to try to slot themselves into, but rather it offers a space for them to craft their own story alongside humanity’s.
Starfieldis scheduled to release in 2023 for PC and Xbox Series X|S.
