On the creation of ships, side quests, outposts and much more: Todd Howard revealed new details of Starfield
Less than three months are left before the release of Starfield, and the community, of course, considers the days to finally get this ambitious cosmic role-playing game from Bethesda. While you are waiting, Todd Howard, the director of the game, recently took part in the Kinda Funny Games podcast, where he told a lot of interesting things about Starfield, including biomes, creating ships, companions and much more.
Biomas
Starfield will represent several biomes, each with its own characteristics. The appearance on these planets and the cataloging of the environment, including fauna and flora, will become an important aspect of the game, and information about them can even be sold by merchants.
There are many biomes. There is a temperature here. There is radiation. All this is on our planets to protect and vest. If you are not prepared, and certain climatic conditions will appear on the planet, this can lead to certain negative consequences. Obviously, there are planets on which there is one type of bioma, but there are planets on which there are several. There are creatures, there are plants, and all this is due to biomes.
Most of the game is devoted to the study of the planet, the search for flora, fauna and resources. Moreover, plants have their own characteristics. Creatures, some of them can be aggressive or dangerous. In some cases, the following problem met: predatory creatures killed all more peaceful creatures that you could find. In addition, if it is good to examine the planet, the data obtained can be sold and earn a lot of money in the game. Most of the game is devoted to this, it is almost like Zen.
Companions
Companions promise to be more worked out than in previous games. They can be given orders, and if you make a choice that does not suit them, they will throw you. Bethesda thought about those players who prefer to play alone.
Companions are simply magnificent. Our experts did a huge job with them, and the main companions have great depth. But we also offer help if you don’t want to do this. [. ] If you want to play alone, there are appropriate skills that allow you to get special privileges and improvements if you play solo.
About the fact that they can leave themselves, it depends on your decisions. They can get angry with you. Thus, your relationship with the companion may vary depending on what choice you make in the game. You can leave them behind, you can tell them where to go, you can assign them to the position, attach them to ships that you do not use.
Ships
One of the main advantages of the game is undoubtedly a system of creating ships. All ships can be completely modified, even those that you abduct in space. However, to maintain a healthy game economy, before starting playing in the editor, you will have to spend loans on its registration.
All of them can be modernized, we created these ships with the help of an editor that you all saw. When you steal one of them, you will have to register it. If you want to modify or use it in this form, you will have to spend loans to register it, and this is a way to keep the economy [game] for us from falling. You can fly on it, but if you want to modify it, you will have to register it.
The construction system will be complicated, for this reason Todd said that it was created taking into account the characteristics of Endheim, and not for the sake of players who just started playing. And if the creation of ships and a change in their characteristics is already a matter of the future, then improving weapons and other details is a much simpler occupation.
This is a very complex system, and we expect it to appear in Endheim, this is not the way you launched the game and immediately started creating your ship. It will take a lot of loans, this is a very complex system, in the good sense of the word.
This is something long-term in the game. You can easily upgrade your ship. You just come and say: "I want to modernize this weapon", "I want to upgrade the movement or shields", It is very easy to do. But when you go into this mode, break up [your ship] into parts and collect it, this is already a separate regime. This is something long-term.
As for the interior of the ships, it will be based on the modules from which players create their ships. As for the visual design of ships, according to Todd, to achieve the current result was one of the main tasks of Bethesda.
These [interiors] can be combined. There are modules, and interiors are attached to them. There are different modules for different tasks, this gives the ship uniqueness, and when we developed the design of the game, we thought about what costumes we want, how the weapon would look, and slowly worked on ships.
But how to make them look cool, convincing [. ] and at the same time give the player the opportunity to create them. So this, along with planets, was a big problem for us.
Side quests
According to Todd, he understands the benefits of the fact that accidentally generated quests can complement the game, but he believes that they do not replace more complex quests. For Starfield, the team has created many quests that players will find scattered around the world.
Our developers have done an amazing job. There are many of them, we have many specific quests, but not random, which you mentioned. I don’t think this is something mutually excluding. We have such quests, for example, you can land on the planet and look into some post, and we will generate a quest nearby. I think it’s normal if you know what you are doing, and such tasks, with a good gameplay, can be funny, but they cannot replace deeper missions, and we have made them a lot.
Avvanposts
The system of creating settlements from Bethesda returns again, now even more complex, which allows you to build bases on various planets. These bases will serve players by generating the economy, but, like the system of creating ships, this is something designed for more advanced parts of the game.
Avanposts, just what I spoke in the case of the creation of ships, are a very deep system and require a large number of resources to do what you want to do. You can do all this, that is, you can land on the planet and start building, but you will have to think non -standard, you will need your character’s skills, you will have to collect resources, but there are a lot of things, and in the end you can connect [bases] between planets, transporting various objects between them.
This is a very cool system, but I repeat, as in the case of shipbuilding, it was not originally created as a system for a single passage, it was created with the calculation for a long period of time.
Additional information is that the game, unfortunately, will not have a fishing system similar to the one that was in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Anniversary Edition. True, in order to catch fish, it can simply be killed.
Starfield will be released on September 6 for PC and Xbox Series S | X. The game will also be available by subscription through the Game Pass service.