You probably won’t play through Starfield quests in the best possible way at first, according to lead quest designer Will Shen.
Shen spoke at length about Starfield and, more specifically, its quest design in a new interview from Bethesda (opens in new tab), explaining how Bethesda draws from its “old school RPG roots: lots of dialogue choices, referencing the player’s skills and background, a variety of combat and non-combat activities, and highlighting our brand-new setting in a way that signals where to go for what kind of stories you want to experience.”
He goes on to suggest a level of replayability in Starfield that we haven’t heard teased until now, calling the concept of player choice a key theme in designing the world.
“Choice is always a big one,” he said. “Both the choices players will make, but also what choices the people and the world can make in response. So when I’m writing things out, I usually go ‘okay, the player just did X, how would their allies and enemies respond? What’s the best move they could make? If they can’t make that move, why not?’ There’s always some better option you might miss, but if it makes sense at least from the game’s perspective, you’ll hopefully get the feel that the story is responding to you.”
This is the second time Shen’s talked Starfield this week, with a recent video interview revealing that Starfield’s random encounters will involve whole procedural mini-quests. He also explained how Starfield will explore “what happened to Earth” before humanity settled on Mars – an area you’ll be able to explore in the game.
Shen also revealed that Starfield lets you join all of its factions at once, “kind of like in Skyrim.” And yet despite some similar elements, Xbox boss Phil Spencer recently insisted Starfield isn’t a reskin of Skyrim.