Starfield is set to release later this year. It’s the first new IP in 25 years for Bethesda Game Studios, and sets its sights skyward, offering up a spacefaring adventure for players to enjoy.
From what we’ve seen of Starfield, it very much looks like an evolution for the studio. There are elements of Fallout in there, but Starfield is decidedly more of a straight space-sim than many were perhaps expecting. It’s still a single player RPG first and foremost, but there’s also trading, ship customization and more to enjoy.
While we wait for more info on Starfield, this page will stay up to date with all the latest news and rumors related to the game. As more info is revealed, you’ll find it here. For now, here’s what we know about Starfield so far.
Starfield: cut to the chase
- What is it? A Bethesda RPG set in outer space
- What can I play it on? PC and Xbox Series X|S
- When can I play it? First half of 2023 (exact date TBC)
Starfield: Release date and platforms
Starfield launches for Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S and PC sometime in the first half of 2023, after Bethesda announced a delay for the game. This was recently reconfirmed (January 2023) via an update to the game’s support page. (opens in a new tab).
When Starfield does release, it’ll be an Xbox console exclusive, with the E3 2021 trailer explicitly confirming this, ruling out a PS5 release. It won’t be on Xbox One either, Bethesda’s moving on from Microsoft’s last-gen console. With Microsoft now owners of developer Bethesda, this could be indicative of the future of titles like The Elder Scrolls 6 and Fallout 5 going forward.
Starfield trailers
Latest Trailer
The latest trailer we’ve gotten for Starfield was shown off last year, at the Xbox and Bethesda Showcase. It offered up our very first look at extended gameplay. You can check it out below:
More trailers
We’ve included some key Starfield trailers throughout this article but you can find all the Starfield trailers that have been released to date on Bethesda’s official YouTube channel.
Starfield gameplay
During 2022’s Xbox and Bethesda Showcase, we got our first in-depth look at Starfield’s gameplay. Starting with customization, we’re playing a fully customizable protagonist. Changeable skin tone, head shapes, hair, hair color, eyes, and body details, Bethesda’s giving us the usual options here, alongside ‘Background’ and ‘Traits’.
Backgrounds offer three starting skills each. For example, picking ‘Dueling’ awards 10% extra melee damage, while ‘Gastronomy’ lets you create unique food and drinks, alongside researching further recipes. Meanwhile, Traits can shape your personality, so if you choose the ‘Extrovert’ trait for example, you’ll have more endurance when travelling with companions, and less when alone. Unsurprisingly, this can’t be mixed with the ‘Introvert’ trait, which does the opposite.
This presentation also gave us our first real look at ship customization too, which we know is modular. You can piece entire sections together, swapping out core components like cockpits, engines, and more, and it seems that there’s no need to individually craft those parts. It looks like we’ll buy these from individual vendors across different locations.
Shortly after the presentation, Bethesda confirmed more on its Twitter account. Revealing that Starfield uses a first-person perspective for dialogue, our character also won’t be voiced, which may prove welcome news. For the unaware, a voiced protagonist was first attempted by Bethesda in Fallout 4, which faced widespread criticism. Unsurprisingly then, this change has been (mostly) well received.
Thanks to an IGN interview with Todd Howard, we learned plenty more about Starfield. Speaking about Starfield’s length, Howard explains it’ll be 20% bigger than Bethesda’s previous games, such as The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Fallout 4. Estimating you’ll need 30-40 hours for the main story alone, he advised: “This one’s ending up a little bit longer [than our previous games] and we may tune that some still. It’s more quests, so it might be 20% more than our previous ones”.
He’s also clear that despite the large-scale freedom to explore, Starfield still offers a clear ‘golden path’ to follow, for those only interested in the main story. Telling IGN there’s more handcrafted content than Bethesda has ever created in Starfield, Howard confirmed.
Starfield story and setting
Starfield promises a grand spacefaring adventure across the vast universe, set 300 years into our future. After a few initial missions, our protagonist gets invited to join Constellation, the last group of space explorers. We’ll be meeting them in the United Colonies’ capital city, New Atlantis, tasked with searching for artifacts across The Settled Systems.
Speaking to IGN in a June 2022 interview, Todd Howard revealed New Atlantis will be Bethesda’s biggest city yet. “It has all the services you would expect, and you can work on your ship there, the factions touch that. But that’s also the headquarters for Constellation, which is the faction that you join that is the last group of space explorers – kind of this NASA-meets-Indiana Jones-meets-The League of Extraordinary Gentleman [group].”
Unsurprisingly, there’s rival groups with separate goals, like the Crimson Fleet, who it seems we’ll be frequently clashing with. Previous videos from Bethesda have also confirmed the existence of violent Spacers, ecliptic mercenaries, and fanatical religious zealots of House Va’Ruun.
This takes place across 1000 fully explorable planets between 100 star systems, and four major cities. Including New Atlantis, we currently know about three of them. Following a past war with the United Colonies, the Freestar Collective marks the other major faction within The Settled Systems, and both currently maintain an uneasy peace.
Controlling three star systems, Freestar uses the walled Akila City as its capital, which keeps out “alien predators that are a cross between a wolf and a velociraptor.” Then we have Neon, a pleasure city created by the Xenofresh Corporation. Having created a unique psychotropic drug, Aurora, it’s now a popular tourist spot.
Starfield news
Starfield is getting its own showcase in the coming months
Microsoft recently revealed an Xbox Developer Direct for January 25. While listing the games that would be shown, Starfield was left out, to the confusion of many. Speaking in a blog post about the event (opens in a new tab), Xbox reveals that Starfield will get its own showcase later on in the year:
“To dedicate the proper amount of time for a deep dive into Bethesda Game Studios’ Starfield, a standalone show is in the works.”
All we know so far is that this deep-dive will air after the Developer Direct.
Starfield may be lonely, but that’s exactly what Bethesda wants
Speaking in a recent interview with podcaster Lex Fridman, Todd Howard, the game’s head director, explained how the team at Bethesda embraced the “beautiful desolation” of Starfield’s massive open world.
