Everything we know about 'Starfield', Bethesda's follow up to 'Skyrim'

American fantasy RPG makers are like horror filmmakers in the sense that they too dream about the day they find an excuse convoluted enough to move to space. The earth-exodus simulator everyone is most hyped about for right now is Starfield, Bethesda's follow-up to Fallout 76 Skyrim. Bethesda has finally broken the 3-year long galaxy radio silence marathon they began right after the announcement of the space exploration RPG. Coverage is good, sure, but this one is troubling because the game comes out in about 8 months and 8 is also the number of seconds of in-engine footage they had to show for it. No, really. The only “gameplay” shown is basically just a .gif of a robot moving his LED projector-ass head.

Luckily, they had a lot of words to try to make up for the lackluster gameplay, but none of them felt particularly visionary – or in tune with our times, even. Developer Will Shen says there will be many available factions you can join, the best starter probably being Ryujin Industries, a representation of corporate life – exactly the kind of escapism the people who've reached adulthood since playing Skyrim would want! And it gets better! Did you know you can also be a narc? Yeah, Howard proudly states that you can join the “Crimson Fleet”, the game's space pirates, and then rat them out to the authorities because that's totally everyone's sci-fi dream come true.

On a hopefully better note, Todd goes on to say that the game will be more like the hardcore RPGs of the past, which sounds really awesome until we realize it doesn't specifically mean anything. Does that mean there'll be less hand-holding like in the glory days of Morrowind? Does that mean that the lack of gameplay footage hints at the fact that it'll actually be a pen and paper thing? The only thing we know is that Starfield will feature the same persuasion system from Oblivion, but then again no because Howard talks about that over footage from Skyrim. How do we know he doesn't mean to talk about the dialogue system from Fallout 76?

Top Image: Bethesda