The news of its delay (alongside that of Arkane’s Redfall) out of the symbolic 11-11-2022 release date certainly hit fans hard, but now there might be an indication that Starfield isn’t that far away after all. On the thriving GamingLeaksandRumours subreddit, user ganndalf posted a screengrab showing Starfield’s expected release window to be early 2023. The image was taken on the Game Pass site, though we weren’t able to get the same message when we tried to go there.
When the game’s delay was announced, Bethesda only said both Starfield and Redfall were now targeting launches in the first half of 2023 (which is already somewhat crowded with triple-A titles thanks to the likes of the Dead Space remake, Resident Evil 4 remake, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild sequel, and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League). While vague, the message included in the above screenshot seems to narrow that down to the first quarter of the year. Not much is known about Starfield. The game will use a highly evolved version of the Creation Engine, which Bethesda’s Todd Howard described as the biggest technological leap ever made by the tool especially when it comes to rendering, animation, pathing, and procedural generation. Set in the year 2310, Starfield features a customizable protagonist who’s a member of an organization of space explorers called the Constellation. The explorable space is named The Settled Systems, an area of around fifty light years outside the Solar System. The plot begins approximately twenty years after the end of the Colony War, with several major factions like the United Colonies, the Freestar Collective, and Ryujin Industries still plotting against one another. Players will be able to join any of them, including the pirate-themed Crimson Fleet, which could be infiltrated as a sort of undercover space cop. Other known tidbits about Starfield include the sizable amount of dialogue (over 150K lines, which is almost as much as Skyrim and Fallout 4 combined), the inclusion of hardcore RPG elements, improvements to the character creation and persuasion systems, and the confirmation of full mod support. We should learn a lot more about the game in three days, anyway, as Starfield is expected to be the star of Microsoft’s Xbox and Bethesda Games Showcase (Sunday, June 12th, 10 AM Pacific Time). Until then, stay tuned.
