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Starfield with Will Shen
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Bethesda have released another Constellation Questions developer chat video for Starfield, this time with Lead Quest Designer Will Shen.

There are no major revelations but this video does nail down a few details for this game which have varied in previous Bethesda titles.

Dynamic events

Skyrim and Fallout 4 featured randomized encounters in their respective game worlds - individuals or small groups who would attack the player, ask to be escorted somewhere etc.

Though not overly sophisticated, they added to the sense of those worlds' authenticity.

In Starfield with whole procedurally generated (mostly) planets to play with, Bethesda have cranked that up a notch, or fifteen.

Pre-built settlements can be randomly spawned on a planet's surface, which exploring or wandering players can find and enter.

Those can include NPCs who task players with going to another randomized location and completing some assignment.

Earth

If memory serves, studio Director Todd Howard exercised evasion when asked about whether or not Earth will feature in the game.

Him saying something along the lines of Starfield is set in the general neighbourhood of Earth and nothing else.

In this Q&A Will tells us that our Earth will be in the game and visited early in the main quest where players will learn what happened to it.

Presumably there was some kind of apocalyptic event or perhaps irrevocable environmental breakdown.

They'll also visit a settlement on Mars called Cydonia.

Will wasn't asked and didn't volunteer anything on this point, but we wonder if it will be possible to build bases on Earth.

Seems very unlikely that they'd hand-craft the entire planet, but they could theoretically feed topographical and street maps into a planet generator, and throw in some procedurally generated building ruins.

Imagine if you could build an apocalyptic Earth base where you actually live.

To be crystal clear, that's not a confirmed feature. Just a possibility we find intriguing.

Factions

What Will described is a system which to the best of our knowledge is unlike any of their previous games.

The main quest storyline gradually introduces players to each of the factions.

Factions aren't in conflict or mutually exclusive.

Also, players will be able to influence faction politics. He gives the example of the Freestar Rangers and says players can choose which is more important to them, justice or industry.

Most of their earlier games include some degree of faction conflict or exclusivity which makes it impossible to experience all of the faction content in a single playthrough.

And while nominally you could end up in charge of any of all of those factions, you couldn't actually influence them.

Starfield seems superior on both counts.

Companions

Companions will express opinions about choices you make during the main storyline.

Seen that in Bethesda's previous games, and also plenty of games by other developers.

There are several times when you can ask companions to speak for you, eg. you're prevented from entering a certain location and can ask a companion to speak on your behalf.

That's not revolutionary but a little bit new.

Companions can act as ship crew.

That's something we would have assumed but now is confirmed.

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

[ Main Image: Starfield - Constellation Questions with Will Shen. Credit: Bethesda via YouTube. ]

References

Bethesda Softworks (December 16, 2022). Constellation Questions: Talking Starfield Quests with Will Shen. YouTube.