Starfield got a new dev diary this week. The latest update discussed character creation, NPC looks, factions and gave us a quick look at the game’s first-ever companion.

Starfield Dev Diary Discusses Character Creation Philosophy, Factions, and Teases us with a Companion

Todd Howard and the rest of Bethesda just love teasing us fans with a drip-feed of information on their upcoming game, Starfield. The latest dev diary, Into the Starfield, was entitled “Made for Wanderers”. In this update, the team discussed various things, such as the character creation, how they’re improving the looks of NPCs, dialogue, factions. We also got teased with the look of the first-ever companion.

Into the Starfield

Starfield looks to be shaping up to be a great open-world sandbox type of RPG. Bethesda will be focusing less on linear progression for its story. Instead, it will put a big emphasis on the player’s journey throughout the stars, as well as the wonder of discovery.

The game challenges players to ask big questions. Some of these include “Why are we here, where is it all leading, what’s next for humanity?”.

Questions like these make the game sound quite ambitious. It is the important questions that keep us thinking if, as a collective species, we’re on the right path.

Not All Who Wander are Lost

Speaking of the Hero’s Journey, Todd Howard and the team intend to put the “roleplaying” back into RPG. As mentioned, the player’s agency will take centre stage in Starfield. To support this philosophy, they will be reintroducing “hardcore RPG” mechanics from older titles.

People are ready for something that does a lot of the things that older hardcore RPGs, something we used to do, doing those again in a new way

Player backgrounds and traits will be fully customizable. By the way that Todd describes it, this will also have an impact on how your journey plays out in the cosmos. Explorers will be able to truly define their character, what they stand for, and who they are. It also looks like they will be reintroducing stat points, which were disturbingly missing from Skyrim.

A Believable Future

To help players be fully immersed in the NASA-Punk style that Starfield is going for, the team has upgraded the way that NPCs will look. Bethesda is making use of photogrammetry, typically used in landscape texturing, to scan real-world models. This should help make interactions as impactful as possible as people will look as real as possible.

Of course, the same looks will also get applied to the player character.

Speaking of NPCs, speaking to NPCs will be much better. To help keep up the roleplaying theme, dialogue choices will be more nuanced. They will actually feel more like conversations and less like ticking off items from a checklist.

Persuasion checks, which were bland in Skyrim, but great in things like Outer Worlds, will also be improved upon. There will be no right or wrong ways to convince someone to share the same mindset as you. Players will need to weigh the risks of each dialogue choice. The system will make it feel like you’re actually trying to persuade someone.

Starfield’s First Companion

Of course, journeying through space will be lonely. At least you will be able to recruit some Companions! The latest dev diary revealed a few seconds of the first companion to be announced for Starfield. Hello everyone, and meet VASCO, our robotic friend.

A lone robot stands in a cargo bay. It then turns its visor towards the camera and finally says, “Hello Captin. How may I be of assistance?”. It is unclear at the moment as to what capacity VASCO will join the player. Will they be involved in combat? Or will they merely be delegated to ship-related tasks? Only time will tell.

The name VASCO is also possibly a reference to the real-world Vasco da Gama, a Portuguese explorer. This man, who was born in the 1460s, was the first to join Europe and Asia by an oceanic route.

A Glimpse into the Factions

Into the Starfield also mentioned four Factions, many of which the player can join. We have the United Colonies, which represents an ideal version of a space republic. Then we have the Freestar Collective, who basically fulfils the Western in Space fantasy (much like Han Solo from Star Wars). Then we have Ryujin Industries which embody corporate life. This faction can actually hire the player and have them rise through its ranks.

Lastly, we also have the pirate faction, the Crimson Fleet. People from this faction won’t necessarily be foes to the player. Instead, the player can still join the pirates and hopefully do some meaningful raiding.

This is definitely a lot to take in! We’re quite excited to see how all of these elements work together. Hopefully, we get in-game trailer footage soon so we can see how well we will walk amongst the stars.

Starfield will release on November 11, 2022. It will be exclusive to PC and Xbox, as Microsoft acquired Bethesda. As with most Bethesda games, it will also be fully moddable.

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