We finally get a deep dive on Starfield

Starfield, Bethesda’s epic new science fiction game, got an hour-long deep dive for fans at the Xbox Showcase today in an online presentation.

Microsoft revealed a lot of the gameplay during the Xbox Showcase today. Todd Howard, director of Bethesda Game Studios, and members of the team have been working on the game for the better part of decade. Now it’s finally coming home after some delays and lots of anticipation. The game debuts September 6, 2023.

I’ve been told that some playtesters have hit 100 hours in the game and they feel like they’re barely scratching the suface. It will be a challenge to finish all the gameplay of missions, exploration, customization and action in your lifetime.

“We’ve never gone this deep on a video game from us,” said Phil Spencer, head of Xbox at Microsoft, ahead of the show at the Novo Theater in downtown Los Angeles.

I think it looks amazing, with so much detail involved in developing your character, upgrading your skills, exploring a galaxy with so many unique planets and settlements, and a mysterious narrative about artifacts. I love how you can pickpocket people or punch someone in a light-gravity environment and send them flying away from you . You can run and gun using your boost pack. You can admire the sunsets and aliens or just wreak havoc. If I had all the time in the world, I could play this for a long time without ever finding the seams that show me it’s a game and not a reality.

Starfield is the first new universe in 25 years from Bethesda Game Studios, the award-winning creators of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Fallout 4. In this next generation role-playing game set amongst the stars, create any character you want and explore with freedom as you embark on an epic journey to answer humanity’s greatest mystery.

The year is 2330. Humanity has ventured beyond our solar system, settling new planets, and living as a spacefaring people. From humble beginnings as a space miner, you will join Constellation — the last group of space explorers seeking rare artifacts throughout the galaxy — and navigate the vast expanse of the Settled Systems in Bethesda Game Studios’ biggest and most ambitious game.

The planets have their own alien life and natural habitats. The music is grand and inspiring. The views of distant worlds are pretty amazing.

You can build a base camp almost anywhere on any planet. You can set up extractors to harvest resources and assign crew to man the outposts. Each place can be individualized as you wish. There are tons of weapons and mods. Boost packs give you an edge in combat. Firing a ballistic weapon will push you backward in zero gravity, but energy weapons will keep you stable.

It will have 1,000 planets and real-time global illumination. You can play it in third-person or first-person. You can explore an area you’ve landed in, collect resources, do a mission and stumble on something unexpected. Howard showed off combat at an abandoned mine. You can fly up in the air to get a drop on enemies and collect loot from the bodies. You can see a ton of detail in every object, from food to weapons.

You can walk back to your ship or fast travel to it. You can have a companion robot that will say your name. Your ship is your home and it looks lived in. Your star map starts with the planet you are on. You can view from a solar system view and you can see which planets have life or resources. You can think of the ship as another character. You can purchase a ship, sell one, or buy parts in a spaceport. You can do smuggling. You can customize lots of things about each ship, changing anything from the crew quarters to grav drives. You can alter the paint to get the exact look you want.

You can shift power to weapons and shields to get ready for a fight. But you have to stay prepared because you aren’t alone. You can target specific parts of an enemy’s ship like a grav drive. You can also board ships like a pirate and have a battle in zero gravity. Then you can take the ship where you want.

Others can inhabit your home so you’ll have a bunch of companion characters who travel with you. Each comes with their own skills and quests. You can recruit new crew members and even fall in love with them. You can assign crew to outposts as well. And you can create your own companion robots.

You can plot a course to stars light years away using a grav drive that folds space. Howard showed us the city of New Atlantis the Alpha Centauri system. This is the newest city beyond Earth. Cedonia on Mars is a city among the United Colonies. Freestar Collective Space has a Western-style city called Akila. Neon started as fishing system and now it’s a pleasure city.

There are places like star yards where you can dock with a gigantic battleship or a cruise ship for the wealthy. You can hail and ship you come across and trade or fight.

There are “artifacts” that are mysterious and may represent a threat to humanity, as they are built by an intelligence from beyond humanity’s knowledge. You can choose your own background and your own traits.

There are a crew of characters from Vlad the ex pilot to a financier and lots of astronaut-scientist types. You can see dinosaur-like creatures or spiders. For a collector’s edition, Bethesda created a real watch for the game with its own case.

The Starfield team had a lot of good lines. It looks like No Man’s Sky, but with so much more amazing visuals and exxperiences. It’s a Bethesda game through and through. You get freedom on a galactic level. Starfield is vast. It’s what you expect from a Bethesda game but on a much bigger scale. There are so many stories, but Bethesda says the most important one is the story you tell.