Religion is one of the themes in Starfield, and to help make the theme and the existing religions in the game feel more believable, Bethesda rehired one of its former writers who had left to become a Jesuit priest.
29.08.2023 - 23:09 / gamesradar.com / Emil Pagliarulo
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.
Bethesda created two new religions for Starfield: The Sanctum Universum, a church that believes humanity's ascent to space exploration is proof of the divine, and the Enlightened, an atheistic group who instead reckon there's nothing theological going on at all.
Speaking to Polygon, Starfield lead designer Emil Pagliarulo explained how the developers went about creating a world with opposing beliefs and how they approached the topic of religion more broadly. As it turns out, Bethesda writer turned seminarian Shane Liesegang was recruited to help out on both fronts and specifically to help write the Sanctum Universum.
"[Religion] was a way to talk about these big concepts but not dive too far down the rabbit hole — you don't want to offend people," Pagliarulo said. "We actually had Shane Liesegang, who was one of our writers [on Skyrim and Fallout 4]... He's now studying to be a Jesuit priest. We talked to him about: If we were to make this real, this religion, what would we do? How would we write it? And so he advised us and did some writing for us, he wrote for the Sanctum Universum, and it really grounded it in the believable."
Pagliarulo goes on to confirm that Starfield's story doesn't reveal which in-game religion has it right, saying it's "open to interpretation."
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Religion is one of the themes in Starfield, and to help make the theme and the existing religions in the game feel more believable, Bethesda rehired one of its former writers who had left to become a Jesuit priest.
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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.
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 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.
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.
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