Starfield director Todd Howard has spoken about plans for the game that didn’t make the final cut, including the idea for a very neat Fallout reference.
23.08.2023 - 15:31 / destructoid.com / Todd Howard / Geoff Keighley / Howard
During the Gamescom Opening Night Live 2023 stream, two cool dudes—Todd Howard and Geoff Keighley—stood on stage and discussed Starfield.
“People have been wondering what the main questline is going to be after you create your character,” Geoff explained to Todd, highlighting the deep character customization system in Starfield. “I saw even someone on the internet this week created you I think, did you see that? Someone tweeted out a picture that they had somehow figured out to get you in there.”
Todd laughed, then followed up with “I see a lot of things on the internet…I’m not sure that’s real.”
So that got me wondering: Did someone actually make Todd Howard in Starfield? After doing some searching, I was able to find this image of what appeared to be a pretty accurate portrayal of Todd Howard in Starfield:
As great as it looks, Todd Howard was right. It’s not real. Even though it may look like a detailed version of Todd Howard in Starfield, it’s just a fake. More than likely just a really good Photoshop. As @FabianoLPeres on Twitter pointed out, the hair shaders that we’ve seen from videos highlighting the character creation simply do not match up. Don’t get me wrong, the hair shaders look great and very detailed—but not to this extreme.
Also, the Twitter user that first posted the Todd Howard in Starfield image, @Sergioodoardi, has posted another Starfield character creation fake: Commander Shepard from Mass Effect. However, in this image, it’s a lot more obvious that this is just intended as a funny photoshop.
With the Early Access launch of Starfield rapidly approaching, it won’t be long until we start seeing some cool creations. I’m sure we’ll end up seeing a pretty solid depiction of Todd Howard after all.
Starfield releases on PC and Xbox Series X|S on September 6. It will also be on Xbox Game Pass.
Starfield director Todd Howard has spoken about plans for the game that didn’t make the final cut, including the idea for a very neat Fallout reference.
Starfield game director Todd Howard has confirmed that the game's official mod tools will be released next year.
Bethesda are adding official support for Starfield mods in 2024, Bethesda Games Studios top banana Todd Howard has told Famitsu in a Japanese language interview. People are already modding Starfield, of course - the options range from "Potato Mode" functionality for lower-spec computers, through somewhat controversial Starfield DLSS mods, to the all-important Starfield script extender, which lets other modders add "scripting capabilities and functionality" to the game. But Bethesda have yet to release proper in-house tools, aka Creation Kit 2.
In an interview with Famitsu, Starfield lead and Bethesda frontman Todd Howard stated that the game's mod support «will be available next year» (obtained via machine translation), which likely refers to Starfield's equivalent to the Creation Kit modding tools for Skyrim and Fallout 4.
While it’s certainly true that Starfield already has more mods than most games ever receive during their entire lifetime, including the hotly anticipated Script Extender thingamajig, it doesn’t take an eagle’s eye to notice that the vast majority of them are still relatively limited in scope. That’s for good reason, too, as Starfield is currently missing a crucial feature that all Bethesda Game Studios RPGS eventually receive: Creation Kit support. Until Creation Kit 2 – built specifically for Starfield‘s Creation Engine 2 – comes out, modders won’t be able to easily add new weapons, customizations, and other assorted goodies into the game, but the good news is that it’s bound to happen relatively soon!
Opinions on Starfield are all over the place, but two criticisms are pretty widely shared: One, the maps aren't very good, and two, it's a bit disappointing that there aren't any ground vehicles to explore planets with.
Starfield is officially out, and modders have been working hard creating helpful add-ons, from useful, quality-of-life mods such as revamping the inventory UI to unofficially adding support for DLSS. Others have added more cosmetic things like reskin in-game clothes. And then there are some people out there who keep modding Bethesda's Todd Howard into the game.
Bethesda's Todd Howard and Xbox head Phil Spencer have been on the interview circuit for the launch of Starfield, as part of which the pair granted an interview to Bloomberg Technology. While the questions have a more general business focus and veer into things like Game Pass and the Elder Scrolls 6 (no new info), the show starts with Bloomberg's Ed Ludlow rather starkly putting an audience question to Howard: «why did you not optimise this game for PC?»
Bethesda’s Todd Howard has discussed the benefits of Starfield being an Xbox console exclusive.
«When you're making something exclusive then the more you can focus.»
Bethesda was acquired by Microsoft in 2021, which resulted in both Redfall and Starfield's Xbox exclusivity. Many have taken this to mean that The Elder Scrolls 6 and, when it eventually launches, Fallout 5 will also be Xbox exclusive, to much disappointment and even backlash. However, Todd Howard argues that this is good for the company and its games.
We all knew that Starfield would have a packed Nexus Mods page in its first week of release, but the dedication of the playerbase is still awe-inspiring. We're only on day three of its early access period and there are already 334 mods uploaded to Nexus at the time of writing. 124 of which were shared today. So, it's no surprise that some of them already centre around the main man himself, the one and only: Todd Howard.