Although plenty of other exciting games will release before its time, Starfield remains one of the big-ticket items for 2022. It's not every day that Bethesda releases a new game, or a brand new IP at that, so Starfield is a big deal. If Bethesda's new spacefaring sci-fi game manages to impress fans, it could spiral outwards into a new core franchise that the studio can lean on alongside The Elder Scrolls and Fallout. Of course, in order to do so, it has to live up to the standard that predecessors that Skyrim have set for it, which is no easy task.
Skyrim is certainly one of the most important works to compare Starfield to, simply for its longevity. Ten years after its release, fans of The Elder Scrolls are still putting tons of hours into the game; what's more, they're constantly finding new details that somehow have gone unnoticed, even after all this time. Bethesda wants Starfield to live as long as Skyrim, and in order to keep fans playing in the same way as its predecessor, Starfield would be wise to borrow some of Skyrim's tricks. Every secret and hidden detail that Starfield manages to wedge in will help the game stay memorable and make it worth coming back to.
Uncovering Skyrim and Starfield's Secrets
A major part of Skyrim's appeal is simply the ability to constantly discover things while wandering the game's landscape. Throughout the game's lifespan, players have had opportunities to discover all kinds of little secrets and rare events that make it feel like a truly cohesive, immersive world, whether it's gaining a secret buff by reading tablets at the Seven Thousand Steps or encountering the spectral Headless Horseman during his journey to Hamvir's Rest. Skyrim's longtime appeal has a lot to do with elements like these that require a lot of dedication from the player to find and ultimately result in memorable experiences.
Starfield would be wise to aim for a similar experience. It's a great feeling to uncover hidden chambers or secrets about NPCs in Skyrim, so Starfield should find ways to provide the same experience by making the most out of its unique setting. Starfield may not benefit from Skyrim's magic and supernatural creatures, but humanity's journey into the stars has surely resulted in plenty of strange and remarkable events that players can learn about by discovering hidden characters, places, and objects scattered throughout the Starfield overworld.
So far, the setting of Starfield provides plenty of opportunities for such things. For instance, the drug-addled city of Neon is undoubtedly filled to the brim with obscure back alleys and basements that tell Neon's complicated story, should players be persistent enough to find these places. Similarly, Starfield is known to have planets with non-human life, meaning the Starfield map could feature caverns where evidence of forgotten alien civilizations lie, or hidden settlements where players can actually interact with Starfield's sentient aliens. The more of these details Bethesda tucks in the game's back corners, the more reason fans will have to play the game for years on end in the hopes of finding everything it has to offer.
So far, odds are good that it'll take Starfield players a long time to plumb the game's depths. If Starfield has multiple planets that compose its world map, then Bethesda has tons of room to fill with special interactions and locations. What's more, Starfield reportedly has twice as much dialogue as Skyrim, which means there's plenty of potential hidden interactions and conversations for players to uncover in the course of wandering the stars. Features like a vast interplanetary setting are strong selling points for Starfield, but the game will really shine if Bethesda fills it with lore-rich secrets just like Skyrim.
Starfield releases on November 11, 2022 for PC and Xbox Series X/S.