Starfield marked the summer video game season with its presentation at the Xbox & Bethesda Showcase. The next game from Bethesda promises to be titanic, the proof with the first images of gameplay.
[Mis à jour le 13 juin 2022 à 15h03] Announced for the first time at the E3 2018 show, Starfield quickly went from simple video game to mythical project. Elusive and invisible, the title of Bethesda quickly attracted the attention of players around the world thanks to the various promises distilled in dribs and drabs by Todd Howard. Four years of waiting later, the game made a remarkable appearance at the Xbox & Bethesda Showcase 2022. Between gameplay sequences commented by the essential Todd, impressive images, and revolutionary features, the game was able to convince the audience and create a lot of expectations around the announcement of its release date. We summarize the essentials for you.
It is therefore as a highlight of the show that Todd Howard presented to us 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 through the stars. More than 1000 planets are explorable there, and you will be able to access them thanks to your fully customizable ship. Here you’ll find resources you’ll need to manage, enemies you’ll need to overcome, and different factions you can choose to follow or not to progress through 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.
“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 expanded during the Xbox & Bethesda Summer Game Fest Showcase, eventually being set at 2023.
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 a little 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 2020, 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.