Starfield Hired A Voice Actor For The Playable Character, Here’s Why They Ditched The Idea

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.

We’re closing in on the final days until Starfield finally arrives. By now, you’ve probably read everything about the game (maybe even filled in your own unofficial character planner). However, did you know that the game was originally going to have a voiced protagonist?

Bethesda’s ambitious space-exploration RPG Starfield is right around the corner, and it’s now been explained why the title features an unvoiced protagonist, despite having over 200,000 lines of voiced dialogue.

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.

The biggest difference between Starfield and Fallout 4 is Bethesda's decision go with a silent protagonist this time around. But that wasn't always the case.

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.

Starfield has a New Game+ mode, ensuring you can keep playing Bethesda's enormous sci-fi RPG even after you eventually roll credits.

This is a quick public service announcement to warn you that Starfield has leaked.

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.