Sam Coe

It’s a little bit funny to think that, while Starfield features a brand new sci-fi galaxy to explore, it was also almost jokingly a known quantity for gamers well before launch. Bethesda Game Studios has a type of game that they make, and while Starfield’s story is of an adventure to find the unknown, the actual game itself feels immediately familiar.

While there may be many opportunities to find love in the cosmos of , one player has taken it to the next level by making romance an extremely efficient way of boosting one's abilities. While Bethesda's latest RPG is littered with NPCs to discover, there aren't too many that are willing to throw caution to the wind and date the protagonist, given their dangerous lifestyle. Fortunately, there are a few that are daring enough to partner up and while there are some fun story moments that come from these interactions, they feel fairly limited in their scope.

The SAG-AFTRA has announced a new deal for AI voice acting, that seems to have hit a problem: its members didn’t know about it.

It’s pretty well known that Bethesda nearly had a voiced protagonist in Starfield. The developer decided against it in the end. However, did you know that one of those actors could well have been the voice behind Adam Jensen?

Starfield's cast of sidekicks includes cowboy dad Sam Coe voiced by Elias Toufexis, also known as the voice of Adam Jensen in Deus Exes Human Revolution and Mankind Divided. This wasn't the role Toufexis was originally hired for, however. The actor revealed that he and fellow voice actress Cissy Jones, who voices romanceable party member Andreja, were originally hired to voice Starfield's protagonist.

Starfield's protagonist is silent, but that wasn't always the case. Sam Coe's voice actor Elias Toufexis has revealed he recorded lines as the voice of the male lead, while Cissy Jones did so as the game's female protagonist.

The voices of Sam Coe and Andreja could have voiced the player character.

There is quite a lot of Starfield. A gajillion planets. A crafting system I still haven't unlocked all of. An embarrassment of cowboys. But there's one thing it's relatively sparse on: voice acting, specifically for the game's main character. Starfield opted for an unvoiced player character for its space-based antics, possibly because everyone made fun of the Fallout 4 dialogue wheel, but it turns out that wasn't always going to be the case.

The voices behind Starfield's Andreja and Sam Coe were originally the voices for your character.

Deus Ex voice actor Elias Toufexis was initially cast to voice the male protagonist in Bethesda's latest sci-fi RPG Starfield, before the developer decided to follow in the footsteps of previous title like The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim to go with a silent protagonist.

Xbox has announced a partnership with a company called Inworld AI in order to «empower game creators with the potential of generative AI» and no, you aren't the only one who thinks that sounds incredibly ominous.

Microsoft has introduced its latest AI efforts which are capable of generating character dialogue, and it's got voice actors fearing for the future of the industry. 

The actor behind Sam Coe in Starfield has said they once had to audition to play their own character's body when working on Deus Ex back in 2008 - and they didn't get the part.

has a vast multitude of companions that space adventurers can meet and recruit to their group. While some have deep and emotional storylines, others have funny personalities or are cool to have around. However, outside the core four Constellation members of Sam Coe, Sarah Morgan, Barrett, and Andreja, the game's other potential ship crew candidates don't get the love they deserve. So far, space adventurers have found a total of 27 different recruitable companions in .

In , players will spend time with several members of Constellation — the society of spacefaring explorers — but one member stands out for all the wrong reasons, thanks to terrible parenting skills, which are possibly the worst in the multiverse. The cowboy hat-wearing Sam Coe is one of the most distinct companions in, thanks in part to his anachronistic appearance but more so due to his daughter, Cora Coe. Cora is the archetypal precocious youth, a 12-year-old girl with knowledge well beyond her years. Sam repeatedly endangers Cora throughout ’s story, making him an unfit parent, before committing the most profound act of child abandonment possible.

Starfield has been out for a while now, giving players adequate opportunity to immerse themselves in the Settled Systems. The game has been praised for being the most polished Bethesda-developed title to date, and for its clever twist on its New Game+ mode.

, like many of Bethesda's past RPGs is a game full of choices and consequences. Most often, major choices in any given quest line will come through dialogue or optional objectives clearly marked in the quest log. However, there's one choice players don't even know they're passively making, which can have devastating consequences later on in the game's main campaign.

Here's everything you need to know about getting close with Starfield's space cowboy, Sam Coe.

Starfield is shaping up to be one of the biggest video game launches in years, with over six million people already digging into it. But as one of the few exclusive games on the calendar in the cooling war between console platforms (long ended, if you ask us), it's not surprising that Starfield has sparked plenty of Xbox vs PlayStation discourse.

Resident space cowboys the Freestar Collective offer up all the western tropes you can shake a stick at, and for those looking to live the galactic gunslinger life, we have Starfield’s Freestar Collective explained with how to join, all the quests listed and rewards you’ll get.

As I wrapped up the Freestar Rangers questline in Starfield, a system-hopping detective romp that I thoroughly recommend to players starting out, my eyes drifted to the United Colonies Vanguard quest I'd neglected starting two dozen hours earlier. Would the Vanguard still want my company after I'd climbed the ranks of their biggest competition? Surely they'd at least give me the stink eye as I approached the help desk dressed in full Freestar cowboy getup, I thought.

[Ed. note: The following contains light spoilers for Starfield’s main quest.]

Having sex in Starfield will give you an XP boost.

Starfield, like most of Bethesda's RPG offerings, has a fairly deep romance romance system that lets you bed and ride off into the sunset with one of four different companions you can meet along your journey. There are a wide variety of benefits that having a loving partner accompany you across the Settled Systems brings, but one of the best is a pretty big XP buff that you can only get by bumping uglies with your significant other.

If you've been saving yourself for that one special Starfield romance partner in your playthrough, it turns out you've been missing out on a status effect that's arguably better than any single chem can provide. It's called «Emotional Security,» and the only way to get it is by having sex. If only it were that easy, Starfield.

It’s dangerous to go alone out into space, so recruiting the best Starfield companions will help you out on your journey across the cosmos.

The national board of actors' union SAG-AFTRA has sent a strike authorization vote to members over the renegotiation of its Interactive Media Agreement. The potential strike would affect voice acting and motion capture work for major publishers in the industry.

Companions are party members that can join you while fighting in the ground or helping you crew your spaceship in Starfield. These useful allies add their skills to you while they’re in your ‘party’ or when they’re assigned to a spaceship in your fleet. You can only have one on-the-ground companion at a time, but you can crew your ship with as many people as the ship can hold. Early ships will let you assign about 3~ crew, but later ships allow you to assign many more. There are 20 companions total you can collect. Check out where to find them all below.

As one of the biggest games of the year, Starfield is expected to be packed with top voice acting talent and interesting characters to keep you entertained for days on end. How much of Hollywood is involved though, if any?

We are just weeks away from the highly anticipated launch of Starfield. The game will feature various companions and crew mates to assist you throughout your Starfield journey and here are all the companions we know of so far.

Bethesda have published a timeline detailing events in the Starfield universe from before the player's arrival. The scrollable chronology, which runs from 2050 to 2160, charts the origins of the war between the United Colonies and Freestar Collective factions, who sound more and more to me like the Union and the Confederacy in the US Civil War. We're also told about the formation of the Constellation organisation, a group of swashbuckling pioneers who are concerned with the origins of certain mystic Artifacts. And we get to read a little about a few key Starfield characters, such as space cowboy Sam Coe, careworn ex-soldier Sarah Morgan and sciencehunk Barrett. But the timeline also leaves plenty of mysteries. Join me, as I make a show of poking around in the collapsing space-museum with my tricorder.