Starfield | 2023
Easily the most anticipated title on this list, Starfield is notable for two reasons: It’s gaming’s next big sci-fi RPG epic and its the next evolution in Bethesda’s open-world formula. Bethesda is no stranger to science fiction, having a number of Fallout games under its belt. But from everything we know about Starfield right now, it’s aiming for an unprecedented scale, featuring over 1,000 worlds for you to explore.
Though we haven’t seen a whole lot of Starfield gameplay, the reveal last summer showed a bit of what we can expect. Here’s your hype fuel for Starfield before its expected release this year:
“Hard science fiction” setting with 1,000 explorable planets
A mix of “handcrafted content” and procedurally-generated environments
More than 250,000 lines of dialogue in classic “Bethesda-style,” and a “persuasion system”
Complex character creation system with various backgrounds and traits that let you tailor your aesthetics and stats
The classic Bethesda mix of first-person combat, exploration, and roleplaying
It’s hard not to get excited about a game like this. While the commonly voiced concern that such a high number of planets may mean we’re in for some serious “quantity over quality” is a fair one, I’d argue that’s always been the case with Bethesda games: Unprecedented scale, unprecedented jank. Despite all of that, Bethesda games of this sort usually cohere to form a unified experience that’s hard to get anywhere else. The question for Starfield will be: Do enough aspects of this epic space sim work well enough to create an intense level of immersion for, oh I dunno, hundreds of hours? I mean, I still don’t feel like I saw everything in Fallout 3 and 4
