Starfield is Bethesda’s next RPG project, set for release before The Elder Scrolls 6 on the next-gen consoles. Despite the size of the project, Bethesda fans have only had a few potentially leaked screenshots to extrapolate from and what little the studio has revealed about the upcoming game so far.
Starfield will be a single player space-set sci-fi RPG, which led many RPG fans to compare it to BioWare’s Mass Effect series when it was announced. The most recent entry in the series, Mass Effect: Andromeda, may have had a disappointing reception, but there could be one way Starfield is similar to the last Mass Effect game that has good implications for Bethesda’s new RPG.
Starfield's Scope
Starfield is Bethesda’s first new IP in 25 years, having focused exclusively on the Elder Scrolls and Fallout franchises in that time. The choice of the name “Starfield” for the new RPG gives some hints into the setting. In astronomy, a starfield is a set of stars visible through a single telescope lens or through a photograph. In short, though a starfield can technically be of any size, it is necessarily only a limited cluster of stars. The title implies that Starfield will focus on a small cluster of stars and planets within a far larger implied galaxy, unlike the original Mass Effect trilogy, which allowed players to traverse the Milky Way.
This is more similar to Mass Effect: Andromeda than it is the original Mass Effect trilogy. Andromeda naturally took place in the Andromeda galaxy but limited the player to five main planets along with a few visitable hubs in between. One of the reasons this didn’t work out very well for Andromeda was the fact that BioWare didn’t take advantage of this smaller scope to develop a deeper and more dense game-world to explore. There was only one major alien species introduced: the Angara.
The fact that Jaal, the Angara companion, was arguably the most popular squadmate in Andromeda is evidence of the fact that players needed something new to motivate their exploration. The original races of the Mass Effect trilogy were exciting at first because getting to know companions of those alien races also gave insight into their home worlds and cultures, but that faded by the last game. Thus, the question becomes: how is this good for Starfield?
Starfield's Potential
While it’s possible that Bethesda's Starfield will have a larger game world than Skyrim or Fallout 4, it seems unlikely that Bethesda would be able to develop a significantly larger game world than either without procedural generation–which could be very possible in outer space itself. That fact along with the game’s title implies that Starfield will focus on just a few main areas, which could be great for a new IP in a way that it wasn’t for an older IP like Mass Effect.
Bethesda has the opportunity to pack a smaller area with unique and compelling new alien races , different biomes, and exciting ecology, all of which could feel totally new to players if Starfield avoids cliche sci-fi tropes. Many of the game’s details from how it might handle companions to exactly what these settings might look like have yet to be released, but there is potential to live up to Andromeda's premise, which itself was good. The execution was just flawed.
Bethesda has confirmed that no news will be released about Starfield until 2021. However, the risky new IP has a lot of potential to deliver a dense and original experience in an RPG market which has relied a lot on long-running franchises to draw players for much of the last decade.
Starfield is currently in development.