We’ve got more information on Starfield, the upcoming RPG from Skyrim developers Bethesda Game Studios, where Executive Producer Todd Howard called it “’Skyrim’ in space.”
Bethesda and Xbox held their joint E3 conference yesterday in which they officially revealed the release date for Starfield set to arrive on November 11, 2022. This just happens to be 11 years to the day after Skyrimreleased. If you missed that, check out our coverage here.
In a recent interview with The Washington Post, both Howard and Managing Director Ashley Cheng sat down to speak about Starfield and the development behind the game. Cheng described it as a Han Solo simulator where players will, “Get in a ship, explore the galaxy, do fun stuff.”
In Starfield, we’ll join an organization called Constellation who are described as explorers of sorts. Throughout the interview, Howard shared just how much his love of space and NASA drove inspiration for Starfield, calling its visual feel “NASA punk.”
He wanted the world to feel real, and this extended to the design of the ship. He noted a pure sci fi game like Starfield would take longer to release for technical reasons. Cheng noted he appreciated the change of pace from working on Fallout for so long,
“I love ‘Fallout. But after seven years of ‘Fallout,’ it’s a little nice to slip away to be working on something so new and fresh.”
The recent passing of ZeniMax founder Robert A. Altman had a profound effect on the team and both men. Altman, who drove the $7.5 billion Microsoft acquisition, tragically did not live to see his final work come to fruition. Howard noted,
“It’s hard to express — I don’t think I ever really will in a way people can appreciate — what he meant to everybody. He and I were very close for a long time.”
Still, it’s clear the work on Starfield drives the team forward. Howard espoused on the innate curiosity of man,
"When you look up in the sky, there is this drive to know, what is out there? Are we alone? What are the origins of space and time and all of those things? What role does religion play in some of that as well? So, we do get into some big questions. I think a game like this is a good place to do that.”
You can check out the full interview over at The Washington Post.
