Not only will Starfield have a large universe to explore, but Bethesda will also be making sure players aren’t bored when they’ve landed on planets either. Bethesda Game Studios’ Director Todd Howard has explained how the game will have four main cities to explore and that New Atlantis, the city seen in the gameplay preview during the Xbox & Bethesda Games Show, will be the biggest the company has ever created.
The main cities of Starfield
Starfield will have four main cities to explore but only three of those have been revealed so far: Neon, Akila, and the capital city of the United Colonies called New Atlantis. The latter is where the Constellation, the last group of space explorers Howard described as “kind of this NASA-meets-Indiana Jones-meets-The League of Extraordinary Gentleman,” has their headquarters. Players will be able to work on their ship, encounter factions, and make use of plenty of other services while in the city. Howard also told IGN that New Atlantis will be the biggest city in Starfield, as well as the biggest city Bethesda has ever created before in titles like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Fallout 4.
The game will also include more than 1,000 planets to explore and will include at least one “step-out moment” so players can appreciate the sheer scale of the universe. Those expecting to be able to fly seamlessly between them will be disappointed, though, as this won’t be possible. Howard deems it to be one of the features that are “really just not that important to the player” and they’ll be concentrating their resources on other areas of the game like space combat. More information on this is promised for the future.
The team is also aiming to do a future deep-dive into how the procedurally-generated content will work but players are to bear in mind their games have always done this in some form. However, players will be able to completely ignore this and follow the “golden path” that represents the full, handcrafted Bethesda RPG if they choose. The result is the main story that will take about 30-40 hours to complete without bothering with any of the side content. This is also about 20% bigger than any previous Bethesda games. Howard said:
“I should also add that we have done more handcrafting in this game, content-wise, than any game we’ve done. We’re [at] over 200,000 lines of dialogue, so we still do a lot of handcrafting and if people just want to do what they’re used to in our games, and follow a main quest, and do the questlines, you’re gonna see what you’d kind of expect from us. But then you have this whole other part of, ‘Well I’m just going to wander this planet, and it’s going to provide some gameplay, and some random content, and those kinds of things.’ Kind of like a Daggerfall would, if you go way back.”
In other news, STALKER 2 has been delayed until 2023, and developer GSC Game World described why in a heartbreaking developer diary. Elsewhere, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla will be getting a free rogue-lite mode called The Forgotten Saga.
