After all these years we finally know what to expect from Bethesda Game Studios’ next big game, Starfield. After the roughly 15-minute gameplay video, which shows how much the space RPG is comparable to No Man’s Sky, we’re now getting more itty-bitty tidbits of gameplay.
In a tweet, Bethesda confirms that Starfield will be doing it old-school with its dialogue: first-person, close shots of the person you’re talking to, and your character won’t have a voice.
Replies to the tweet suggest that some fans don’t welcome this change, as most new games now have voice acting for even player-customisable protagonists. But we have to remember the context of this change: the reception to Fallout 4.
Fallout 4 might be a fun game, but it’s one of the worse of Bethesda’s RPG offerings. One element that the game did not get right is the over-simplification of dialogue choices, and having the playable character have too many pre-defined goals and characterisation (they want to really, really find their son because of the plot).
If anything, this is a commitment on Bethesda wanting to give you, the player, full control of whatever you want to do in the galaxy of 1,000 planets that are all explorable. Having the character you play not have a voice- that’s for your imagination to fill in the blanks – should enforce you to go do whatever side quest or miscellaneous tasks you find interesting rather than go and beat the game.
However, we haven’t seen any dialogue box or choices yet, so we don’t know how far is Bethesda is changing from Fallout 4, their last big game unless you count Fallout 76 as one.
Starfield will launch on PC and Xbox Series X|S sometime in 2023.