Some new details have come to light about how players can engage with factions and quests in Starfield. The upcoming space-based behemoth of an RPG is set to release at some point during the first half of next year. However, as with all big Bethesda games, players have plenty of questions as to what the overall game experience will be like. This is especially true when previous Bethesda epics such as The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and the Fallout series are the yardstick against which many fans are expecting to measure Starfield.
In a new discussion with Starfield‘s lead quest designer Will Shen, some further light has been shed on questing in Starfield. In particular, what players can expect to find when interacting with the game’s various factions. It seems as though there’s some good news for those hoping for a more open-ended structure when it comes to dealing with the game’s factions in particular.
According to Shen, players will be able to interact with the game’s different factions in a more natural way, with decisions and discussions that the players make having an overall impact on how each faction will treat them. This is a much more broad and perhaps more realistic strategy than was the case in Fallout 4, for example. As those who’ve played Fallout 4 will recall, making certain choices with one faction would lock you out from interacting with other factions, effectively turning them hostile towards you. It doesn’t seem as though this will be the case in Starfield, which, according to Shen, will have a much less linear approach to faction interaction.
“We decided we really want to make sure you can play through all the faction lines independently of each other,” he explains, adding “this time around, we really want the stories to be a little more personal; you’re influencing the direction of where this faction is going to go.” Shen clarifies further using one faction as an example, explaining that “the politics of the Freestar Rangers, what’s more important, is it justice or industry? Where are you going to try to nudge them in this direction or another?” This will have a broader knock-on effect on the player’s own status within each faction, as Shen explains “you don’t necessarily end up as the head of every single faction of the game.”
It seems then that Starfield‘s factions will be fairly similar to the style of factions in Skyrim, and that interacting with one won’t mean you become an enemy of another. However, as ever, the decisions players make will have longer-term consequences for the factions they deal with.
Starfield is set to launch in 2023 and will be available exclusively on Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S and PC. It will be playable on day one with Xbox Game Pass.