IGN have interviewed Starfield developers Pete Hines and Todd Howard and coming out of those we have some new details about the game.

Pete Hines mostly just talks about maximising player freedom.

The only new detail he pins down is an entirely expected one - the game's modular ship building system will allow players to either collect resources and craft ship components or just buy those components.

Todd Howard covers a range of Starfield topics and also confirmed that after finishing Elder Scrolls 6, which is in preproduction, they would move on to Fallout 5.

Ships

Ships can't be flown directly from space to the ground.

Space and ground are totally separate environments.

They considered this feature - it is present in some other games (eg. No Man's Sky) - but decided that engineering it wasn't worth the effort.

Ships will have multiple power systems (as seen in the gameplay footage) - one for each weapon system installed, plus engines, shields and grav drive.

Combat is styled as slow paced dog fighting.

Other ships can be disabled, docked with and boarded - some quests require that - and also stolen.

Smuggling is a thing.

Planets

Todd confirms the obvious - with over a thousand planets in the game they're procedurally generated rather than fully hand crafted.

Having made a system to generate one planet, the remainder were very easy.

Can players generate and share their own planets as mods?

He doesn't say but he does confirm modding will be supported - as with their previous games - and also that they'll dive deeper into planet generation at some point.

Size

With over one thousand fully explorable planets, obviously the game's geography is huge.

But the main quest itself is also bigger than previous games which have typically been around twenty-five hours long.

Starfield's main quest - the Constellation faction's search for the mysterious alien artefacts - could be in the thirty to forty hour region. That doesn't seem to be finalised.

Last year in October he told us that Starfield had over 150,000 lines of dialog.

Now it's over 200,000.

Starfield is presently scheduled to release on PC and Xbox in the first half of 2023.

[ Main Image: IGN interview with Pete Hines. Credit: IGN via YouTube. ]

References

IGN (June 15, 2022). Starfield: Developer Interview With Todd Howard | Summer of Gaming 2022. YouTube.

IGN (June 15, 2022). Starfield - Pete Hines Developer Overview | Xbox & Bethesda Showcase 2022. YouTube.