Starfield is the next Skyrim
Can we still be a stealth archer?
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Recently, Bethesda Studios held a broadcast where they highlighted the many aspects of their upcoming action role-playing game, Starfield. Starfield has been in development for the past eight years, but the game has content that could keep players engaged for the next decade. In a recent interview with IGN, Todd Howard gave details about Starfield that have us thinking that this may be more than a singular RPG.
Howard said, “Starfield is like five or six games in one, right? It’s the spaceship game, it’s the on the ground game, it’s the dialogue game, it’s the outpost game, it’s the crafting game… It does all of these things. It is always tricky for us to get a good game flow where those things don’t feel like they are separate games.”
To put the size of Starfield’s world into perspective, there are 338 locations accessible via the map in Skyrim. However, there are nearly 700 unique locations in the game in total.
Compare this to the aforementioned 1,000 planets – Not 1,000 locations – 1,000 planets. Each with its own cities, peoples, and stories. This doesn’t even include the ships and anomalies you may encounter while flying through outer space.
With this level of scope, Starfield will be the next Skyrim in terms of playability in the coming years.
In the same conversation with McCaffrey, Howard commented, “…when it comes to Starfield and science fiction, the same sort of thing where if you were to open it up and you could do anything, how are we providing that experience? We love exploration, so when you get into a game like this, that’s why you have a thousand planets. We’d rather give you the option to do that.”
Something else to consider is what Todd Howard said about Starfield being “five games in one,” meaning that are multiple full-length experiences to be had. This means a player can elect to spend hours exploring the vast galaxy, or raiding ships and recruiting NPCs to fight alongside them. Even better, the player can do nothing interesting at all and just trying to be a leader of their own outpost, or resident in a town.
Like Skyrim, Starfield will allow players to make their own path, and choose missions and playstyles, best suited to the experience they want. It feels like the idea was to give players every reason to continue to play this game for the next decade to come.
Not even including potential DLC, the sheer scope of the world and variety in choice of play will leave players with enough content for years.
