Starfield, Skyrim developer Bethesda’s upcoming space RPG, got quite the showing at this year’s E3 extravaganza. Now only was the Starfield release date unveiled at the joint Bethesa and Xbox showcase – which is due to arrive 11 years to the day after Skyrim – but we’ve also seen various other details tumbling out about what the space game will bring. Now, the studio has also given us a peek at under Starfield’s hood with a new clip.
Called ‘Into the Starfield: The Journey Begins’, the clip offers an “inside look as we share the inspiration and process behind developing this new universe”. It’s pretty brief and is more of a broad strokes kind of look at the game, but we do get to see some neat shots of character and location concept art, mocap performance, CG in development, and a few other bits and pieces. Plus, an adorable cat that seems determined to get involved in the game’s development. Awh.
Starfield director Todd Howard talks us through the concept behind Starfield, highlighting that the game is the studio’s “first new universe in over 25 years” and “the kind of game we’ve dreamt of playing”. He explains that it’s “only now that we have the hardware, the technology, and the experience to push our creative boundaries even further”, calling it a “next-generation role-playing game”.
We see some cool shots of character concept art that looks both futuristic and totally familiar – even shabby in a way that’s reminiscent of the studio’s post-apocalyptic RPG games series Fallout. Figures are kitted out stitched-together armour with crude, chunky breathing packs and dark fabric space suits, while others sport more heavy duty and cloaked variations, with packs of resources and supplies handing from their belts. This is just concept art, but gives us a little insight into the somewhat gritty feel Bethesda’s aiming for with the game.
This ties into a point Howard made in a recent interview about Starfield having its own distinct flavour and space within the genre, explaining that setting the game 300 years into the future could give you license to design a “much sleeker” ship, though Starfield “has touchstones back to the current space programme. So in your mind, you can draw this line between them. Like there’s various guns the player has, and other weapons and things like that… but the more exotic ones feel exotic in the reality of the game versus not.”
Elsewhere we can see some shots of an actor performing mocap of a character using a ramming device of some kind, as well as some other aspects of its development.
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Starfield launches on November 11, 2022, exclusively on the Xbox Series X / S and PC.