There was little doubt in anyone’s mind that Starfield was going to be an absolutely massive game, and in recent days, new details revealed by developer Bethesda Game Studios about the upcoming open world space-faring RPG have only made that clearer.
At the recent Xbox and Bethesda Games Showcase, creative director Todd Howard revealed that Starfield will feature a thousand explorable planets, which will feature a mix of procedurally generated content, as well as the most handcrafted content in any BGS game to date, all of it coming to a play time of about 30-40 hours. And in that time, the major locations you’ll visit throughout the game will also be bigger in scope.
Speaking in a recent interview with IGN, Howard revealed that Starfield will feature four major cities, out of which one – the city of New Atlantis, which be got a glimpse of in the recent gameplay showing – is the biggest city that Bethesda Game Studios has ever developed for any of its games.
“It has all the services you would expect, and you can work on your ship there, the factions touch that,” Howard said. “But that’s also the headquarters for Constellation, which is the faction that you join that is the last group of space explorers – kind of this NASA-meets-Indiana Jones-meets-The League of Extraordinary Gentleman [group].”
Howard went on to explain that a bulk of the game will revolve around New Atlantis, what with the city being the HQ of Constellation as well as the capital city of the United Colonies faction, while there will also be plenty of side quest for players to find.
Recently, other details have also emerged regarding Starfield, and its space flight gameplay in particular. Howard has confirmed that seamless space-to-planet flight will not be possible in the game, though players will be allowed to steal spaceships, so there’s that to look forward to. Meanwhile, unlike Fallout 4, Starfield will feature first person dialogue cutscenes and a voiceless protagonist.
Starfield is out in the first half of 2023 for Xbox Series X/S and PC.
