Starfield allows players to fly to any planet they want, only it'll take hours upon hours, and you can't manually land on them.
17.08.2023 - 02:45 / pcgamer.com / Will Shen
In a Q&A to celebrate Starfield's symbolic «gone gold» milestone (which has been reposted to the subreddit), lead quest designer Will Shen was asked if entirely non-lethal playthroughs will be possible in Bethesda's space RPG. They won't be, although Shen says that Bethesda did consider the possibility of supporting pacifist playthroughs early in development.
«We talked about this very early on during pre-production, whether or not we would fully support a 'non-lethal' playthrough,» said Shen. «We realized that, for various reasons, that wasn't totally feasible.»
Shen didn't go into the fine details of what makes pacifism infeasible in Starfield, but said that «there are some good non-lethal options» in the RPG, even if you're going to have to knock someone off eventually.
«Those [non-lethal options] can be used in certain situations, honestly a lot of situations, though I couldn't comfortably say you can complete the entire game without any killing whatsoever,» Shen said. «The Settled Systems is mostly civilized, but it can be a dangerous place if you're going off the beaten path. And you're absolutely going off the beaten path!»
Starfield's "speech challenge" system is one of those murder-free conflict resolution options, and Shen said that it shows up in «most quests where important characters confront you.»
It's not surprising that you're going to have to dispose of at least a few space assailants during Starfield's main quest. I doubt many have the patience to complete non-lethal runs in games that support them anyway, but it is always fun to know when the path is there.
The question got me wondering how a non-lethal Baldur's Gate 3 run would go, it being the RPG of the moment. You can certainly talk your way out of lots of BG3 conflicts, and NPCs will often go and kill each other if you don't stop them, which seems OK, since it isn't your doing. You can also «knock out» enemies with non-lethal melee attacks, so that when you are forced to fight, you don't have to kill. Knocked-out enemies are as good as dead, so it's a bit of a technicality, but sticking to KOs only would still be tough: No shoving people into chasms, no blowing them up with powder barrels, no finishing them off with spell attacks.
It's more fun to think about than do, for me: I've killed a lot of goblins in BG3 and I'll kill more, and I plan to blow up lots of spaceships in Starfield. With goblins in them, if there are space goblins. I'm happy to send apologies to their families, if that's an option.
Starfield allows players to fly to any planet they want, only it'll take hours upon hours, and you can't manually land on them.
Starfield early access is finally available to everyone with a Premium or Collector's edition, but after such a long wait, a lot of players are bummed to be spending so much time staring at loading screens.
With Starfield's long-awaited launch upon us, Bethesda has been doing the media rounds to chat about the upcoming RPG. The studio has released a few buggy games in its history, so a question was eventually raised about the bug in the room – a timely subject with Starfield already releasing via pre-order early access.
Starfield doesn't support Nvidia's DLSS supersampling tech, which is commonly used to help games run better on low graphics settings, but that doesn't rule it out from being implemented in the future.
If you were hopeful that mod support would be featured in Starfield right out of the gate, you might be in for some disappointment. Fortunately, we knew Starfield would feature mod support. The video game is easily one of the more anticipated titles to launch this year and arguably one of the biggest for the Xbox team in a very long time. However, with the game nearly here with the official launch and those on early access getting to dive in, you will have to enjoy the vanilla experience of the game. All the extra goodies that come packed from mods will be coming later.
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?
We have some early impressions of how Starfield runs on PCs.
Starfield is almost here. Bethesda announced the new IP way back in 2018 and after more than five years of waiting, it’s set to launch on Xbox Series X/S and PC next week, on September 6. Based on what Bethesda’s revealed about the sci-fi RPG, it looks set to be the developer Bethesda Game Studios’ biggest game yet. Hitting up its hundreds of planets while fighting space pirates, marines, and more will also require a decent PC build.
Starfield will let you fully explore a planet as soon as you land on it.
One Starfield fan is ensuring that the upcoming space RPG will have DLSS support shortly after launch, even if we might not get it officially.
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.
Two of Starfield‘s lead designers have shared more information on the game’s story and gameplay.