About Starfield ♦ Patch Notes ♦ DLC ♦ Controls ♦ Combat ♦ FAQ

Character Creation ♦ Stats ♦ Classes ♦ Skills ♦ Builds ♦ Races ♦ Companions ♦ Romance

Weapons ♦ Armor ♦ Augmentations ♦ Items ♦ Crafting ♦ Mods

Online & Multiplayer ♦ PvP

Story ♦ Locations ♦ Missions ♦ Merchants ♦ NPCs ♦ Enemies ♦ Bosses

Walkthrough ♦ Missions ♦ Bosses ♦ Endings ♦ Build Guides ♦ New Game Plus ♦ Game Progress Route ♦ Trophy and Achievement Guide

Starfield Release Date: Early 2023

When will Starfield be released?

Starfield is projected to be released in the first half of 2023. The game was originally announced to be released on November 11, 2022, but was later delayed. In March 2023, it was announced that the game would be released on September 6, 2023.

 

What platforms will Starfield be on?

Starfield will be available on PC, Xbox One and Xbox Series X & S.

Starfield Gameplay: Reveal Trailer

Bethesda's latest Starfield Gameplay Reveal gives us a sneak peek into many in-game mechanics, such as:

• Planet exploration
• Character Customization
• Skills
• Crafting
• Outpost building
• Spaceship building

About Starfield

Starfield is set in a universe in space very similar to our own solar system. The game, it is assumed, will only provide players with the freedom to customize human characters, and as the game progresses, various races of alien life will be introduced.

Starfield is set in the universe the game has created, in an area of our solar system called The Settled Systems. The game is set in the year 2330, in a relatively small pocket of the Milky Way, in an area that extends outward from our solar system for approximately 50 light years.

Around 20 years before the start of the game (2310) the 2 largest factions in the Settled Systems, the United Colonies and Freestar Collective, engaged in the bloody Colony War. Today, the major factions enjoy uneasy peace, but the Settled Systems is still pretty dangerous. There are plenty of human threats our there, like the Ecliptic Mercenaries, Pirates of the Crimson Fleet, Violent Spacers, or even the Fanatical Religious Zealots of House Va'ruun.

Starfield Environment

Starfield may introduce a bigger environment that is even larger than The Elder Scrolls and Fallout series' maps, allowing players to explore a variety of planets on a scale seen in few games. The planets in may include different cities with diverse alien races. It's also safe to assume that Starfield will have factions similar to Fallout 76, that players may join, and will inject other groups as the story progresses.

A large part of the environment will be the NPCs you encounter. Starfield will have significantly more intricate dialogue, reaching over 252,953 lines of dialogue as opposed to 60,000 lines and 111,000 lines of dialogue in Skyrim and Fallout 4 respectively. In addition, the game will feature a persuasion mechanic, allowing you to sway both enemy and friendly NPCs alike towards your direction.

Starfield Features

The game may offer a firm focus of freedom when it comes to character customization, weapons, armors, and possibly vehicles. The game will also launch with full mod support.

For its Character Customization, players can choose their character's background, with many options for customization that will impact how certain events in the game will unfold. Players will also be able to choose their own pronouns (he, she, they) and all relevant dialogue will support this choice. 

Traits contribute to a big part of the player's character, providing several unique benefits and drawbacks. Players may find their negative effects to gameplay too challenging however, and may want to remove certain traits. Starfield gives you an option to do so in the middle of a run by doing certain quests and missions.

Combat Basics

Combat mechanics in Starfield will resemble those in other RPG shooters such as the Fallout series. Here, players will be have the freedom of running, jumping, crouching and sliding while shooting at enemies. Defeating enemies will grant you experience points (XP) that improve your stats and give you skill points to invest in to further increase your combat ability.

Combat will be more than just shooting your foes, however. Gameplay reveal footage shows that pickpocketing Enemies will be an option while they are still alive, granting you free items. Following Fallout's pickpocket mechanics, it is speculated that pickpocketing can also be done on friendly NPCs to steal their items without provoking them. Besides pickpocketing, players will be able to fly around using a jetpack while in combat. This jetpack can also be used out of combat to better navigate through planets and harvest materials, but in combat it may give you a positioning edge over your opponents.

 

Levelling up & Skills

Reaching experience point (XP) thresholds and levelling up in Starfield will grant you Skill Points. XP can come from many sources including defeating enemies, completing Missions, and discovering new places. Skill Points will be used to unlock new skills in the various skill trees available.

Skills are are divided into 5 skill trees. While not much has been revealed, these are the speculated focuses of each tree:

• Physical: may focus on improving the character's base stats, such as health and endurance, increasing natural damage reduction, allowing the character to sprint quicker and jump higher, or even increase the amount of XP gained.
• Social: may focus on NPC interactions, including improving the character's pickpocketing ability, getting discounts at stores, increasing your relationship gain when completing NPC quests, or even being able to tame alien creatures temporarily in combat.
• Combat: may focus on weapon-related upgrades, including increasing gun damage, improving accuracy, quickening reload speed, increasing ammo count, and making grenades deadlier.
• Science: may focus on the crafting system, allowing you to unlock more crafting recipes, speed up research times, increase crafting yield, and increase the effectiveness of crafted consumables, as well as upgrading your exploration equipment such as your scanner and mining laser.
• Tech: may focus on matters regarding Outpost and Spaceship building, allowing you to purchase and use better Ship Modules and outpost parts, reducing the number of crew required to maintain them, or improving the resource gathering efficiency and capacity of outposts.

Once a skill has been unlocked, it can be further ranked up to increase the benefits gained when using them. Skills can be ranked up naturally when using them or by completing their respective challenges. Ranking up skills also requires using skill points.

 

Weapons & Crafting

In Starfield, it is expected that you'll be able to collect, craft and carry numerous weapons of different types and uses. From the gameplay reveal, it seems like weapons will be split into 4 categories - pistols, rifles, shotguns, and machine guns - and you'll be able to assign up to three of each gun in their respective wheel slot. Players may be able to find more weapons when defeating Enemies, exploring planets and opening chests, through crafting, and by completing Missions.

Weapons, and Armor, can then be further upgraded through several Mods crafted. From the Research Laboratory, players will be able to conduct various research projects under 5 main categories: Pharmacology, Food and Drink, Outpost Development, Equipment, and Weaponry. Resources found during exploration will be key in crafting. Every research project in a research tree has to be done sequentially - for example, the research project on Barrel Mods 1 must be completed before being able to conduct research on Barrel Mods 2. Not only will this in-depth crafting system allows players to improve their gear and equipment, but also create new items helpful in exploring new planets and consumables that will give them an edge in combat.

 

Lockpicking

Besides being able to loot items and weapons off of defeated enemies, these can be looted from boxes all over the map. Some of these lootboxes will be locked and require you to lockpick them open. However, Starfield's lockpicking mechanics do not follow the conventional mechanics found in other games. Here, the game provides up to four Digipicks that have set shapes. You will have to decide which pick fits in what layer of the lock and when to use them. 

Locks will have various security levels, and so similar to Fallout, it is speculated that you will need to invest in a certain lockpicking skill to successfully pick locks of higher difficulty.

Spaceship Combat

One key aspect of combat in Starfield will be space combat. Spaceships in the game will be fully customizable, including weapon systems and shields, and the player will have complete control over them while travelling from planet to planet. Unfortunately, you're not the only one flying through space and you may have to engage enemies flying their own spaceships.

The ship's health is denoted by the integrity of the hull on the bottom right corner of the interface. If added, ships will have boosters, a pair of guns, and homing missiles. You will have to keep the ship's reticle on the enemy ship for a certain period of time before the missiles can lock onto them. The enemy will have access to all these utilities as well and a warning will pop up on your screen if you've been locked on by their missiles.

Fuel contributes an important part of the spaceship's capabilities. Previously, fuel mechanics were more realistic, with ships coming to a halt whenever fuel ran out. However, the development team felt this was too punishing, and changed it so that fuel doesn't ever completely run out during a voyage, but instead limits how far one can go at a time.

While navigating outer space, you will be able to dock onto friendly ships and space stations. From there you will have three options - to undock, get up, and board the other ship. Presumably, you'll not only be able to fly your spaceship, but you'll be able to walk around in its interior to interact with your ship's crew, meet new NPCs on new ships and space stations, chart new courses, and gather resources. There may also be a mechanic to replenish your ship's health and weapon supplies while docked on friendly structures.

Docking will also be available with enemy ships, though what you can do from then has not been revealed. You may be able to infiltrate the ship to defeat it's crew internally, or even steal their ships for parts and credits.

 

Spaceship Crafting

Spaceships in Starfield will be completely customizable and will feature an intricate assembly system. Players will be able to choose from a wide selection of Ship Modules to assemble their dream spaceship, such as cockpits, engines, landers, shields, fuel tanks, habitation modules, reactors, and more.

Ship Modules will come in all shapes, sizes, stats, and manufacturers, and players will be able to freely design the layout, color palette, and power of their spaceship. These parts will cost credits and resources to use, and some may even require the player to have specific Skills unlocked.

Outposts

In Starfield, players will have access to a 'home away from home' in each planet with Outposts. Using the Build Mode, players will be able to mix and match different structures to customize their own player-made bases. Structures require resources to build, and once built, require power to operate. NPCs players meet on their journey can be recruited to maintain their outposts and these outposts will feature some kind of resource generation mechanic.

Players will first have to place down an Outpost Beacon, defining the area in which they can build in. From there, you will have several structures to choose from such as airlocks, hydroponic units, science units, military units, and watchtowers.