6 Things You Didn’t Know About Starfield to Get You Even More Excited
We are a mere amount of days away from the release of Starfield, and with Xbox currently running at full steam on the hype train, we now know as much as we possibly could about the game this side of playing it for ourselves. With that in mind, you might think you have a pretty good picture of what Starfield is going to be like once you boot it up on September 6th, but think again. We’re here to whet your appetite even further with some more, juicy details about Bethesda’s latest RPG that you may have not even heard about until now. Here’s six more things about Starfield to get you even more excited.
Think Oblivion, not Skyrim
It’s easy to assume that Starfield is essentially going to be Skyrim in space, but a couple of comments from those who have direct access to the game have pushed back against that comparison. In fact, Xbox Head Phil Spencer, who recently told IGN that he’s now on his 15th playthrough of the game, added that Starfield is “is more Oblivion than Skyrim”, explaining that “for people who’ve played [both], maybe they’ll get that.”
Well, Phil, as someone who has played both, I’m not entirely sure I do get that, but we can make plenty of decent guesstimations as to what he means. Developed in the twilight years of the CRPG era, Oblivion is more of a classic role-playing experience than Skyrim, with deeper options for player agency, and – in the opinion of more than a few – richer, more memorable side quests that would involve players deeply into its world.
Spencer’s comparison to Oblivion may also have something to do with the pacing of the game, if we also consider the comments of Todd Howard alongside his. The Starfield game director recently told GQ Magazine that landing on a planet “is not the same as dropping you in a world like Skyrim,” since “you wander totally differently.” Again, it’s hard to fully understand what Howard is getting at here, but my best guess? Whereas Skyrim was often keen for NPCs to come up and talk at you every five minutes, Starfield’s galactic scale will likely mean more vast, empty spaces where the environment does all of the talking. Speaking of Oblivion…
An Elder Scrolls icon, reborn
Yes, the Adoring Fan is back. The pig-nosed, sycophantic twerp who first became an internet legend after his appearance in The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion returns in a different incarnation for Starfield, voiced once again by Craig Sechler. The character will turn up if you select the Hero Worshipped trait when creating your character, and will be ready to shower you with both compliments and gifts for as long as you let him. You can even bring him as a companion aboard your ship if you want to, and though he may not be particularly helpful in a fight, he can certainly hold his own as a glorified pack mule for all of your precious loot.
Better yet, if the Adoring Fan starts to become more of an Annoying Fan (which may be pretty soon after first running into him), well… you can always send him on a trip to Belize. More than anything, the character’s presence illustrates how flavoursome and crunchy Starfield’s new trait system is, allowing players to experiment with the different role-playing elements of Bethesda’s new sandbox. Who knows, pair Hero Worshipped with the Kid Stuff trait, and perhaps your parents will offer to look after the Annoying Fan for you, keeping him stuck at home like an annoying, endlessly talkative house pet?
A bug-free galaxy
At first, this might not be seen as cause for celebration within the Gaming Exploits community, who – if our audience data analytics are anything to go by – really, really love breaking Bethesda games. But there are fun exploits, and then there’s Bethesda jank; a.k.a. the awkward, immersion-breaking bugs that can ruin your play experience and, in the case of Fallout 76, permanently undermine a game’s reputation from day one.
Thankfully, Bethesda seems to have learnt from its recent mistakes, and the year-long delay for Starfield has all been part of an effort to make it the most optimised game in the studio’s portfolio to date. Speaking to Giant Bomb earlier this year, Microsoft Game Studios Head Matt Booty promised that Starfield will “have the fewest bugs that any game from Bethesda has ever shipped with”, claiming that Xbox has “an awful lot of people internally playing it” to smooth out as much of that infamous jank as possible.
Sounds promising, though part of me still hopes they keep at least some of the funnier glitches in. It may have been ridiculous, but the Skyrim bug where corpses kept turning up at my wedding still remains one of the most memorable experiences I’ve ever had in Tamriel, even if my new bride didn’t seem too pleased about the whole thing at the time.
An Elder Scrolls game in disguise
Okay, perhaps this one’s a bit of a reach, but with so many hundreds of planets to visit in Starfield, would it be totally implausible a prospect to be able to visit Nirn, the planet on which the continent of Tamriel resides? Bethesda has already promised plenty of Easter Eggs for fans of their games to discover in Starfield, after all, and while no one is expecting a fully explorable Tamriel to simply land their ship on, there’s plenty of special ways for the studio to implement the idea.
Perhaps you could land on a barren and lifeless planet that was clearly beset by some sort of calamity from long ago, only to find relics and dilapidated landmarks across the playspace that seem… oddly familiar. A dragon skull over here…a crumbling Oblivion gate over there… a very matured wheel of cheese hidden within the sands…but hey, we’d settle for a view of the beautiful cloud district filled with animals, overgrown grass, wild flowers, and most importantly nazeems corpse. Whatever manner Bethesda might make this wish fulfilment a reality, and it’s a very big if as to whether they do, it would certainly be a great way to tease up The Elder Scrolls 6, and perhaps even finally confirm where and when that sequel might be set.
A new era of Bethesda role-playing
On a slightly more techy note, it’s worth acknowledging that Starfield is the first title to be developed alongside Bethesda’s new game engine, the Creation Engine 2. This is the first new engine the studio has developed its games in since Skyrim, meaning players can not only expect a significant visual upgrade from Starfield over the studio’s previous titles, but also a marked improvement over how the game feels to play.
Better still, given the noticeable differences in visual quality that players have spotted by comparing Starfield trailers over the last year, it seems as though Creation Engine 2 also allows Bethesda to be much more agile and rapid in their ability to update their games, both during development and after. Creation Engine 2 will also be the engine that Bethesda uses going forward for future titles, including The Elder Scrolls 6 and Fallout 5, meaning that Starfield is essentially our first glimpse into how those already confirmed sequels might look and play on our TV screens. In short, Starfield ushers in a new era of Bethesda games, ones no longer hampered by the limitations of Skyrim’s old school tech.
It’s bigger than you think
We all know Starfield is big, but we’re finally getting some hard numbers to give as a better picture of just how big it is. And, uh, turns out it’s really, really big. For example, Bethesda’s Head of Marketing Pete Hines recently told IGN that he’s “being honest, there’s really not an amount of time that we’re comfortable enough [to say], ‘Now you’ve played enough to get what this game is.” Case in point? Hines confirmed that he’s at around 160 hours on his current playthrough, and “hasn’t even come close” to seeing all the game has to offer.
Hines even went on to reveal that Starfield’s main questline alone takes 50 hours to complete, and that he had already put 80 hours into the game before he even really started going down that critical path. Throw in the fact that Starfield has more dialogue than Skyrim and Fallout 4 combined, and it sounds like we’re in for one the most content-heavy modern role-playing games of all time. Hope you’re ready to say goodbye to your social life. And your sleeping pattern. In fact, you might as well just book out your calendar right the way up until your funeral.
You can of course expect lots of fun glitches, guides, and exploits from us over the next few months with Starfield. So don’t forget to check out our YouTube channel, join the thousands of players in our discord if you want to talk more about Starfield or glitches for any other game.
So have fun, and we’ll see you on the other side.
