A twitterer has reported Todd Howard via the Tokyo Game Show revealing the number of lines of dialog in their upcoming RPG Starfield - 150,000. For comparison Skyrim had 60,000 and Fallout 4 almost double that with 111,000.

But is more, surprising or impactful?

Making numbers go up is the backbone of many games, including Todd's. It seems only fair that he need to do the same.

Dialog and story have typically been excellent in Bethesda games but Skyrim is still one of the played games on the planet as it approaches its 10th Anniversary and third re-release. With those same measly 60,000 lines of dialog.

In the intervening years Bethesda have plumbed the depths of gaming microtransactions and controversially continue to attempt to monetize mods in their single player games through their "Creation Club".

Community made and freely shared mods add immense variety and value to their existing games. Far fewer copies would have been sold without them.

At this point, however, it's reasonable to expect microtransactions to be baked into Starfield in some fashion and that may significantly limits its appeal. Regardless of all those lines of dialog.

[ Main Image: Todd Howard at Tokyo Game Show. Credit: Bethesda Game Studios via Twitter. ]

References

Nibel [@nibellion] (September 30, 2021). Todd Howards appeared on stream to announce that Starfield will have a complete Japanese localization (just like Redfall) and mentioned that the game has over 150,000 lines of dialogue apparently #TGS2021. Twitter.