There are two types of science fiction: soft sci-fi, which is like Star Wars and Star Trek, which basically doesn’t try to explain any of the fantastic things people can do in their universes, and then there’s hard sci-fi. This category is more concerned with making an accurate depiction of the future. Think cyberpunk stories like Blade Runner and Ghost in the Shell, or classics like 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Bethesda CEO Todd Howard said in a recent interview that Starfield will be more like “hard science fiction, where you can draw that line from 'okay, here's how man explores space' and you can like even look at our ships and say 'all right, that has some visual identity back to that.'
"But it's a trap question because it's a video game. A hard science fiction video game would be 'you die in space cold.'"
As an example, Howard pointed to Starfield’s space travel and how your ship's gravity drive would go through fuel. Initial implementations of the gravity drive felt "punitive" to the player because "your ship would run out of fuel and the game would just stop." However, Starfield’s latest build changes direction to essentially prevent the player from ever running out of gas and getting stuck in space. Basically, the system will only let players travel as far as their gas tanks will allow.
"We've recently changed it where the fuel in your ship and the grav drive limits how far you could go at once, but it doesn't run out of fuel," explained Howard. "Maybe there will be an update or a mod that allows that, but that's what we're doing now."
Elsewhere in the interview, Howard talked about Starfield's "super fun" traits list, but cautioned that each and every trait will come with a downside. However, those negatives can be erased later on if the player goes on a certain quest or performs a certain action.