- This information comes straight from the Lead Quest Designer of Starfield, Will Shen.
This information comes straight from the Lead Quest Designer of Starfield, Will Shen.
Starfield is Bethesda's next big IP and promises to shake up the genre. The gameplay trailer for the title dropped six months ago to a surprisingly tepid response, and many still feel trepidation, given the reaction to Bethesda's last major release, Fallout 76.
In the most recent addition in the 'Constellation Questions' series, on the official Bethesda YouTube Channel, Lead Quest Designer Will Shen highlights some of the new things that we can expect in Starfield.
One of the first things mentioned concerns the faction questlines and how they will work, with Shen stating, "We also discussed early on, like 'okay, do we make some of the factions in conflict with each other,' and we decided we want to make sure that you can play through all the faction lines independently of each other."
This is more akin to Skyrim than Fallout, with the factions being a little more disjointed from the rest of the story. There was also a discussion about returning to our solar system (Called the Old Neighborhood in-game) and discovering what happened to Earth, which Shen remarked: "Very early on, we take you to our Solar System."
Shen also mentions random encounters, a staple of modern open-world video games. Of course, in Starfield, players can explore entire planets, and as Shen stated, "We have entire planets that we have to populate."
He went on to say the technology will "take whole locations" and place them on these 'random' planets, leading to a dynamic system that can generate entire locations and quests on the fly. It seems ambitious and would reward exploration and discovery, which this game appears to focus on heavily.
Lastly, the discussion turned to companions and their impact on a player's experience. Shen stated that companions "Have opinions" and, as such, can remark regarding your decisions. Shen also mentioned that players can have the companions "Speak for you," a system that has been implemented in many modern RPGs; Dragon Age: Inquisition, for one, springs to mind, but Shen also says that these companion interjections are not going to direct conversations the way you want every single time.
Are you excited about Starfield? Or are you still cautiously optimistic? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below.
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