Starfield's design director has said Bethesda regained the trust of players after fixing Fallout 76 following its rough launch.
17.08.2023 - 08:09 / videogameschronicle.com / Emil Pagliarulo / Will Shen
Two of Starfield‘s lead designers have shared more information on the game’s story and gameplay.
Lead designer Emil Pagliarulo and lead quest designer Will Shen held a Q&A session on the official Bethesda Discord server (which was then summarised on the Starfield Wiki).
A total of 16 questions were answered, covering a wide range of topics such as buying houses and recruiting companions.
Although the full answers can be found on the Starfield Wiki, some of the key information provided included the following:
Bethesda announced on Wednesday that Starfield had gone gold ahead of its release next month, indicating that the main development of the game has been completed, and that it’s ready to move to the manufacturing stage.
It also confirmed that players can preload the game on Xbox Series X/S starting today, and on Steam on August 30.
Starfield was originally scheduled to be released last November, but in May of 2022 the game was delayed to the first half of 2023. Bethesda announced a further delay this March, with Starfield now set for release on September 6, 2023.
Starfield's design director has said Bethesda regained the trust of players after fixing Fallout 76 following its rough launch.
Emil Pagliarulo, the lead designer of Bethesda’s upcoming mega-RPG Starfield, recently revealed that the developers had a Jesuit priest-in-training advise them when creating the game’s religions. Shane Liesegang, the up-and-coming priest in question, actually served as a former writer for Bethesda who specifically worked on both Skyrim and Fallout 4. That former connection combined with Liesegang’s studies helped the team at Bethesda make one of Starfield’s original religions as authentic and believable as possible.
Bethesda consulted a former Skyrim and Fallout 4 writer, who's since become a Catholic priest in training, to help build out the RPG's two in-game religions.
Going from Skyrim to Fallout 4 and then subsequently Starfield proved a challenge for some of Bethesda’s writers.
In Polygon's recent interview with design director Emil Pagliarulo, it was revealed that Starfield very nearly had a voiced protagonist in the style of Fallout 4's sole survivor.
Bethesda games have long had silent protagonists, even counting Skyrim's Dragonborn who goes from silently muttering sentences to Fus Ro Dah-ing companions off cliffs. Fallout 4 changed that with two voice options which, along with a watered-down dialogue wheel that never laid out exactly what you were going to say, drew backlash. Starfield took note.
Starfield lead designer Emil Pagliarulo has revealed that developer Bethesda almost decided to give its protagonist a voice. Pagliarulo spoke about the game featuring a silent protagonist in an interview with Polygon leading up to the release of the sci-fi RPG.
In the five years since Bethesda Softworks first announced Starfield, much of the conversation has been focused on the endless possibilities that await players within the game’s web of planets and choices. There’s complex character and personality creation, a spectrum of geography all tricked out with the latest lighting and physics technology, customizable spaceships and space teams from highly dimensional NPCs, and loads of other bells and whistles to take advantage of the current generation of consoles.
A man who gained notoriety for leaking 45 minutes of Starfield has been arrested for handling stolen goods — reportedly including copies of the game he attempted to sell online.
Starfield has a New Game+ mode, ensuring you can keep playing Bethesda's enormous sci-fi RPG even after you eventually roll credits.
Starfield lead designer and writer Emil Pagliarulo has spoken about one of the game's quests which he says he's "really psyched for players to experience". The quest was created with Eric "Ferret" Baudoin, who was also working as a senior designer on Starfield before he sadly passed away in October last year.
As an enthusiast of both science fiction and driving long distances through empty spaces, I've been hoping that Starfield would let me achieve my dreams of becoming a space trucker. The recent Starfield dev Q&A brought equal parts good and bad news on that front.