Bethesda intends to make up for a few complicated years with the release of Starfield, a futuristic RPG with almost excessive ambition. We explain everything about this highly anticipated game.
[Mis à jour le 27 janvier 2023 à 12h55] If he was the big absentee from the last Developer Direct conference of Microsoft and Bethesda, Starfield does not go out of mind all the same. This crazy project led by the creators of Fallout and Skyrim shows us an almost galactic ambition, after the crazy promises of the essential Todd Howard during the Summer Game Fest 2022. But this project which must get Bethesda out of a bad patch after the Fallout 76’s failure, and proving to the public that the studio is still capable of delivering legendary games to match Skyrim, seems way too good to be true, and its launch just might give us flashbacks of a certain Cyberpunk 2077. While waiting for his presentation announced for the next few weeks, we take stock of all the essential information about him.
The latest official Starfield release date information is from May 2022:
“We have made the decision to postpone the launches of Redfall and Starfield to the first half of 2023. The teams at Arkane Austin and Bethesda Game Studios have incredible ambitions for their games and we want to ensure that you receive them in their best possible versions. We want to thank you all for your excitement about Redfall and Starfield. It is an immense energy that inspires us all every day and guides our own enthusiasm for what we are creating. We can’t wait to share our next dive into Redfall and Starfield gameplay with you. Thank you for your support.“
A decision justified by the ambition of Starfield, which will be Bethesda’s most titanic project to date. And if you want our opinion, it is better today to postpone the release of a game than to force a brutal and inadequate release. Remember the releases of Cyberpunk 2077 and Battlefield 2042, two disasters caused by marketing departments clearly out of step with the development services of CD Projekt Red and DICE. Especially since the latter warned their respective studios well before the release date that their games were not ready to be distributed to the general public. For Bethesda, it’s all about delivering quality, finished products, a decision supported by most of their community. The less good news, however, is that the game’s release window was extended during the Xbox & Bethesda Showcase of Summer Game Fest 2022, to be finally fixed then recently confirmed in the first half of 2023.
It was therefore at the highlight of the Summer Game Fest 2022 show that Todd Howard presented us with the latest and most titanic project from Bethesda: Starfield. More than fifteen minutes of images, comments and statistics that had the gift of making us dizzy. You can rewatch the Xbox & Bethesda Showcase announcements above, but to sum it all up, the game may well conquer your Xbox Series or PC before conquering the stars. Currently in the final stages of development, the game is scheduled for release in the first quarter of 2023. Gameplay-wise, Starfield is shaping up to be an open-world RPG, a grand space epic of exploration, intrigue, and fights that will integrate almost everything that can be expected from such a type of game today. Crafting, skill tree, advanced character customization, impact of choices on the plot, construction of bases and ships, combat on the ground and in space… Todd Howard had something to gargle with the many images that he had to show us.
Starfield will therefore be a futuristic role-playing game set in the cosmos. You will embody the character you have decided to create in the first or third person, in his quest to forge a name for himself through the stars. More than 1000 planets are explorable there, and you will be able to access them thanks to your fully customizable ship. You will find resources that you will have to manage, enemies that you will have to overcome, and different factions that you can decide to follow or not to progress in the plot. Add to that crafting elements and extremely extensive character customization, and you’ll have a gargantuan project that could well overwhelm your hard drive before destroying your framerate.
But that’s not all, Starfield is also a pure RPG. You will therefore have access to a skill tree in addition to the in-depth customization of your protagonist. You will choose to invest points in it to unlock passive and active effects that you can then improve through different challenges. Something to quickly take your adventurer from zero to hero. On the progression side, there is also the eternal crafting, which will allow you to modify and improve your weapons as you wish. Note that the game will also include the ability to build bases of operation where you want, and to hire NPCs there to perform various tasks.
Unfortunately for fans of Sony consoles, since the friendship between Xbox and Bethesda after the takeover of Zenimax Studios by Microsoft two years ago, the future of Bethesda games on Playstation is more than uncertain. Starfield will therefore only be released on Xbox Series and PC, the Xbox One not having the resources to assume such a title. A sizeable next-gen exclusivity, therefore, which will have something to rebalance the balance between Sony and Microsoft after a year 2022 clearly in favor of the Japanese manufacturer on this side (Horizon Forbidden West, God of War Ragnarök, etc.).
To be short in our answer to this question: no, Starfield will not incorporate multiplayer elements. While nothing is ever set in stone, the game has, since its announcement in 2018, always been advertised as a single-player game. Note that it is always difficult to offer an experience of the size and ambition of this RPG in cooperation or multiplayer. Information which, although it is not new, may deserve a little tear, as the potential of such a project in cooperation or multiplayer is titanic. Exploring the stars is good, with several it would still be a little better.