In a recent interview, executive producer of Bethesda Softworks, Todd Howard, revealed more details about the developer’s upcoming space RPG, Starfield. This includes a thorough look at the persuasion system, branching dialogue trees, and traits your character can equip.
Starfield is making a return to the classic dialog system in previous Bethesda games. However, the scale is larger than ever seen before.
There are over 250,000 dialog lines in total in comparison to the average 110,000 in Fallout 4 and 60,000 in Skyrim.
Furthermore, the persuasion system is being completely revamped. This was previously touched on several months ago, in which Howard claimed it “feels like you’re having a conversation where you’re actually trying to persuade somebody of something.”
You will need to spend points to persuade NPCs, yet the experience “feels natural.”
There was another discussion regarding whether or not Starfield falls under the category of hard science fiction. While the game has a foundation of logic and scientific accuracy, there have been several concessions made.
In the words of Howard, “We were really into fuel and how the gravity drive works. And I’m reading papers on quantum physics and bending space in front of you. You don’t actually warp, you bend the space toward – you bring the space toward you. And so we were playing that and it became very punitive to the player. Your ship would run out of fuel and the game would just stop.”
Howard went on to add that players will have the ability to discard negative character traits through the completion of quests.
Although Starfield was set to release on November 11, 2022, it has since been delayed to ship in the second half of 2023.