On the other side star field‘s 100 star systems and over 1,000 planets, there will be plenty of procedurally generated content. But Bethesda game director Todd Howard said there’s still a lot of “craftsmanship” going into the ambitious upcoming space role-playing game.
Microsoft showed a lengthy trailer on Monday during the Xbox and Bethesda Games Showcase to build the world and establish its storyline: It’s the year 2330, and a group of space explorers – you, the gamer , be one of them – seeks to recover lost artifacts. The story spirals from there and should branch out. When the trailer came out, Howard dropped those huge numbers – that star field would have an unthinkable number of worlds to explore, thanks to procedural generation. This worried some players, who asked: 1,000 is too much? Will these worlds be truly fleshed out and believable?
Howard told IGN the answer is basically yes and no.
Howard said in an interview with IGN that star field see you [content] craftsmanship…than any game [Bethesda’s] done before. He said Bethesda wants to say ‘yes’ to the gamer – meaning gamers could do something far out of the way of star fieldis the main game and that it is meaningful. Some of the worlds will be constructed story areas, following star fieldBethesda’s main path, which will look familiar to Bethesda fans. Howard told IGN that the main quest is about 20% bigger than games like Ancient scrolls: Skyrim and Fallout 4and takes 30-40 hours to complete, excluding additional supporting materials.
But alongside this built-in questline, players will also find worlds that are essentially barren scoops of ice, Howard said. And if a player wants to, they can explore that.
“So we’re pretty careful when we say, ‘Here’s where the fun is, here’s this kind of content’, but always say yes to the player and ‘You want to go and land on this strange planet, check it out and build a pre- post, and live your life there, and watch the sunset because you like the view of the moons there? Go ahead,” Howard said. “We love that kind of stuff.
The areas that star field has “handcrafted,” as Howard puts it, includes four main towns. One of those cities is New Atlantis, which was featured on Monday during the showcase. Much of the main questline will take place there, Howard told IGN, noting that it’s the largest city Bethesda has created.
star field was announced in 2018 alongside The Elder Scrolls 6, which Howard says is currently in pre-production. The game was originally slated for a November 11, 2022 release date before being pushed back to 2023.
star field will launch for Windows PC and Xbox Series X, and it will be playable at launch via Xbox Game Pass.