Although Starfield is Bethesda's first new IP in over 25 years, the studio hasn't held back from directly comparing it to some of its most popular past releases. In an interview with the Telegraph, Todd Howard described the upcoming space-set RPG as "like Skyrim," while discussing some of the similarities between the games, likely in part to diffuse growing impatience over The Elder Scrolls 6.
One similarity between Starfield and Skyrim will be Starfield's multiple joinable factions, already a mainstay of Bethesda's Elder Scrolls and Fallout games. Skyrim's faction system, however, is not without its flaws. Starfield's factions can't just emulate the ones found in Skyrim. They'll need to overcome some of The Elder Scrolls 5's biggest shortcomings to feel like a true generational leap forward.
Skyrim's Factions
Although Skyrim has multiple factions, it doesn't really have a faction system. The game's factions have almost no relationship with one another, only the player. Although there are some factions which are in direct opposition to each other, like the Stormcloaks and the Imperials fighting Skyrim's Civil War, most of the game's groups are really just the narrative framework for major questlines. Revitalizing Skyrim's Dark Brotherhood or Thieves Guild has no real impact on the world at large. When their quests run out, Skyrim's factions are reduced to handing out inconsequential side-missions, because that's all the game's factions really are at that point — quest-givers.
The problem isn't the faction quests themselves. Some of Skyrim's faction quests are among the best in the game. Players get to assassinate the Emperor of Tamriel, turn into a werewolf, execute heists, and slay vampires. Once a faction's main quests are over, however, the sense that the player can impact the world in any way ends with them.
The Dragonborn can be the head of the College of Winterhold, the Thieves Guild, the Skyrim chapter of the Dark Brotherhood, and a major player in the Civil War. Not only will most NPCs never notice or comment on this unless they're aligned with the relevant questline, but the player themselves has no opportunity to use their power. They can never approach the Stormcloaks as the leader of Thieves' Guild, for example, only as another recruit. It's almost immersion-breaking to complete too many of the faction questlines with one Skyrim character. The more faction questlines the player completes, the more glaring their lack of impact on the world becomes.
Part of the problem is that most of the faction questlines see the player rapidly rise from the newest member to the leader, who meets their untimely end with remarkable reliability. This is the case in the Dark Brotherhood questline, the Thieves Guild, the College of Winterhold, and the Volkihar vampires. It isn't just this specific plot structure that causes problems, but the fact that it's repeated for so many of the game's major questlines.
Starfield's Opportunity
Bethesda has compared Starfield to Skyrim, and Todd Howard has discussed the game's multiple factions as one point of comparison. So far, just one faction has been revealed. Constellation appears to be Starfield's main faction, a space exploration organization setting out to complete "humanity's final journey." It seems like Constellation will be deeply attached to the main quest, and so is unlikely to operate like one of Skyrim's factions.
Starfield's other factions, however, can't just be the same isolated, structurally repetitive questlines found in Skyrim. The Elder Scrolls 5 is a game that touts the player's freedom, but rarely delivers on the consequences of the actions the player is free to do. This is true to the extent that the Dragonborn can personally kill the Emperor and then side with that same Empire in the Civil War without anyone even bringing up the Emperor's death.
Working with a certain faction in Starfield and helping them achieve their goals should feel like it changes the game's galaxy. Helping a faction of raiders rise back to prominence, for example, should make the galaxy feel like a more dangerous place. The state of one faction should be noticed and mentioned when talking to other factions, and the player's position within a certain faction should be something they can use as leverage outside of that faction's questline.
If the player has teamed up with a brutal band of space pirates, like the ones hinted at in Starfield's armor concept art, there should be some acknowledgement of that choice in the main quest at the very least. If they have done work for a faction that opposes the goals of another faction, that should affect their reputation with both, raising new challenges and opportunities. Perhaps most importantly, choosing not to side with a faction should be a meaningful decision, rather than just the decision not to experience one of the game's main questlines.
In an ideal world, the varying strength of the game's different factions would have a dynamic effect on Starfield's in-game universe; changing who is in charge of certain settlements, which enemies and allies inhabit certain regions, and so on. Such a dynamic faction system ultimately seems unlikely, but if nothing else, Starfield's world and characters needs to acknowledge who the player is allied with.
Bethesda needs to get fans of its other franchises ready to immerse themselves in a totally new setting, so the comparison to Skyrim is understandable. However, if Starfield doesn't significantly improve on the faction system found in Skyrim, the game will feel dated, and not the step forward the studio needs to regain some of the good will lost to Fallout 76 and three years of silence on The Elder Scrolls 6. Some of Bethesda's greatest successes are now firmly in the studio's past, but if Starfield doesn't look forward and avoid the shortcomings of a game like Skyrim it is unlikely to replicate its success.
Starfield launches November 11, 2022 on PC and Xbox Series X/S.