There’s always a lot of talk about what the biggest surprise of any given gaming event is, but overall we seem to be in unanimous agreement this time - the big surprise was thatXboxstole the show. With some major titles, some fresh surprises, and a whole lottaStarfield, Xbox kicked ass without even needing a major reveal like a newGearsor newHalo, although the third-partyStar Wars: Outlawswas a fairly significant feather in the space helmet. Mostly, it just had a lot of games that looked pretty good. My one real criticism was that when I say’a lot of Starfield', hoo boy, do I mean a lot of Starfield.
Xbox’s showcase was just under an hour, and was pretty breezy in that time, opening with Halo and peppering in the likes ofHellbladeandForzaaround smaller, more intriguing looking games than what a lot of showcases have focused on with their live-service ambitions and crowd-pleasing shooters. But there was that weird decision to show a Starfield trailer, then have Phil Spencer tease a ‘just one more thing’, which in fact turned out to be more Starfield. Throughout the Starfield Direct, which was also an hour, I found myself intrigued, then bored, then interested, then disinterested, then wishing it was all over, then excited for a new feature, then back around to bored. But in all that, the roleplay is the best part.
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Part of that is just my reaction to Starfield in general - I’ve never been that intoBethesda’swhole way of doing things, and for me at least, there comes a point when a game gets too big. I tuned out of Zelda for the same reason. I’m hopeful that Starfield holds a little more promise for me, but I’m not expecting to come close to completing every inch of the game over hundreds of hours. The one hook it managed to get in me though was the roleplay aspect.
Starfield has a fairly in-depth character creator, and not just in terms of how each character looks. In what might be a remarkable achievement for Bethesda, its characters manage to look vaguely like human beings, dead-eyed as they may be. But deeper than that, we can take control of our hero’s backstory, and apply traits to them as we build them out. Games have done this before - characters can pick up perks that give them discounts in certain stores, for example, whileDragon Age Originsgives you six different openings to choose from which all shape your character. But none seem on this scale.
Of course, we’ve only seen a very specific portion of the game, as long as it was, and we won’t know until September how these features impact the story. But it seems as if each trait will actively shape how you experience the game, be theyadding unique moments as with the Adoring Fan trait, or offering new paths through missions and side quests as you communicate with the characters around you. As for the backstory, rather than flavour text with one specific mission as inCyberpunkorMass Effect, it seems to have the ripples of Dragon Age Origins but with an even greater emphasis on interaction.
The charm of Starfield is that it has many little hooks. For some, it will be theNo Man’s Sky-esqueterraforming and resource gathering. For others, it will be the hopeful tone in a media landscape so full of dark and dreary narratives. For many, it will be the prospect of building a ship that looks like anything, which for approximately 94 percent of gamers will mean making a penis. For me, it’s the character and roleplay.
I wrote recently aboutthe appeal of Dungeons & Dragons' character creator, with all its complications and depth. When building aDNDcharacter, especially the first few times, you’re often just picking things at random, trying to guess what sounds cool, or making them basic extensions of your character. They might help later in the game, but also, you might forget to look at them. It’s only once you appreciate how many keys to unseen doors this style of character builder gives you that you realise why it has such depth. I’m hopeful Starfield will be much the same.
Some may well ignore most of the character building to get to the side quests or the shooting or the rocket manufacture. That’s fine, and I’ll probably only dabble with ship-building once and will likely do the minimum possible amount of planetscaping. But if Starfield is to steal hundreds of hours from my life, as I’m sure it will for many of us later this year, it will be because of the roleplay. Despite the name, it’s an increasingly rare part of the modern RPG. Starfield could be the game to bring it back.
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