IN THE STARS
Bethesda’s “Skyrim in space” STARFIELD has been delayed to 2023
It’s official: Starfield is not launching November 11 2022 as originally planned. It’s instead now aiming at “the first half of 2023”, according to an official Twitter update.
Bethesda repeatedly claimed that the game wouldn’t be delayed, but the marketing has told a different story. With a focus on developer waffle over substantive reveals, the official videos have been light on concrete info. With only brief in-game clips shown, it’s been hard to believe that the game was only months way.
Director Todd Howard has dubbed it “Skyrim in space”, but he’s keen to emphasise that it aims to do more with character customisation than Skyrim did: “Some things we didn’t do [in older games]: the backgrounds, the traits, defining your character, all of those stats... a lot of the things that older hardcore RPGs, something we used to do, doing those again in a new way.”
One of the examples Bethesda offers is how a character can interact with factions like the Crimson Fleet.
“The cool thing about the Crimson Fleet is, what if you’re a good person, a good player, and you don’t want to play as the bad guy?” says lead designer Emil Pagliarulo. “You can side with the pirates or you can report back to your superiors and be basically a space-cop kind of thing, so it lets you be a good person but still play with the bad guys.”
Starfield will also feature companions, and the first shown off is Vasco: the Constellation faction’s expeditionary robot. Art of Vasco shows it fixing a ship’s underside,
“YOU CAN SIDE WITH THE PIRATES OR YOU CAN REPORT BACK TO YOUR SUPERIORS”
while its strengths are described as traversing rough terrain and carrying a lot of stuff on extended journeys. The robot has weapons, but his primary role is being “peaceful” – so Vasco is going to be your space donkey.
STAR POWER
Starfield’s lead artist Istvan Pely says the guiding principle for its look came when, “We coined the term ‘NASAPunk’ to describe sci-fi that’s a little more grounded and relatable. We wanted a very realistic take. You can draw a line from current-day space technology and extrapolate from there into the future so it’s believable and relatable.”
It all adds up to an exciting pitch, but honestly the thing we’re hoping for most is just a clean launch. For all their splendor, Bethesda’s games are typically a mess when they first release – it’d be nice to see the developer live up to the promise in its update of using the extra time to deliver “the best, most polished version” of the game.
“I like to say that Starfield has two ‘step out’ moments,” says Todd Howard. He’s referring to that kind of moment in Oblivion where, after the dingy and dark tutorial tunnel, you first set eyes on that vast and gorgeous world. It’s going to be a little longer now before Starfield itself steps out – here’s hoping it’s worth the wait.
Rich Stanton