In an alternate timeline, we'd be just a few days away from the release of Starfield right about now, but a delay pushed the game back to the first half of 2023. Still, that gives us more time to learn about what Starfield is all about, and Xbox Games Head Matt Booty has told fans not to expect Skyrim in space when they get their hands on the game next year.
He means that in a good way though, as he believes Starfield "move[s] forward" from Skyrim and will introduce longtime Bethesda fans to "an awful lot of new stuff." Booty said this during an interview with popular YouTuber SkillUp (thanks GameSpot), in which he talks about the inevitable comparisons between Starfield and Bethesda's genre-defining RPG Skyrim.
"There's going to be an awful lot of things that move forward with this game," says Booty. "I think there's going to be an awful lot of new stuff that Bethesda fans and Todd Howard fans have not seen, brought to the game. I know just from checking in with them the team is hard at work to get that thing all buttoned up and put together. I'm fortunate enough to be involved in the status reports and things, and it's just fun watching them iterate through that level of polish on the game right now."
Whether or not Booty's words are accurate remains to be seen, but Starfield is going back to basics with one of its key features - the dialogue system. It was recently revealed that Starfield protagonist will not have their own voice and that the game will feature over 250,000 lines of dialogue, double the amount featured in Fallout 4. Players will be able to push conversations in their preferred direction by being persuasive, which is governed by a point system.
We don't quite know when Starfield will launch, but Microsoft has at least confirmed that it will release in the first half of 2023 and only after Arkane's co-op vampire shooter Redfall. The game will launch exclusively on PC and Xbox Series X/S.