Starfield has over 20 named characters for you to recruit

Starfield officially arrives September 6, but it has already begun breaking records on Steam. The expansive space RPG hit an all-time peak of 248,632 concurrent players, at the time of writing, which goes to show how impatient players have been for Bethesda's latest. For the uninitiated, those who aren't willing to wait for the official launch can purchase the Rs. 6,699/ $100 Premium Edition of the game and play it early. This is applicable across both Steam and Xbox platforms, with even Game Pass members willing to fork over $31.49/ Rs. 2,519 for early access, despite the title being essentially free for them.

As is self evident, Todd Howard’s hand can be seen everywhere across Starfield. Should we call Todd Howard an auteur? That would take away from the efforts of the hundreds of staff who worked on the game, from programmers and game designers, to the creatives who did voice acting, CG graphics, and other elements of the game, and even the testers and other support staff.

Starfield players aren't too happy with the map in Bethesda's new RPG.

Bethesda boss Todd Howard has returned to Reddit almost two years after his last appearance, celebrating Skyrim's 10th anniversary, in order to thanks fans and subsequently bask in over-enthusiastic praise. In the message posted to the Starfield subreddit 'ToddBethesda' writes:

Bethesda brought a few content creators over to the US Space and Rocket Center for a unique experience. To prepare for Starfield, they got to play in a real life space camp.

Bethesda Game Studios once considered giving the playable character in Starfield a voice. In fact, they got so far as to hire a voice actor. But ultimately, they decided not to go ahead with the idea.

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.

The Starfield leaker was arrested last week not for uploading 45 minutes of the unreleased game, but for stealing 67 copies of it, according to a police report obtained by Polygon. Darin Harris, 29, was arrested days after uploading the footage and charged with felony theft — for theft, not leaking.

Heads up, prospective Starfield players — you’re apparently going to be extremely busy playing Bethesda’s space-exploration RPG for quite some time. You'd better finish that Baldur's Gate 3 playthrough while you can.

Earlier this week, those eagerly anticipating the release of Starfield managed to get a first look at the first 40 minutes or so of the game thanks to someone who got hold of an early copy of the game. Having later filmed himself reviewing the game, it was only a matter of time before he would face the consequences for his actions.

To hear Bethesda tell it, Starfield is very much like space as perceived by Douglas Adams: You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to Starfield. In light of that, a New Game+ mode might seem like a bit of a waste, and yet according to a new GQ feature on the game, it will have one—of some sort.