Bethesda surprised its fans with big announcements back during E3 2018 when a teaser trailer was shown forThe Elder Scrolls 6and another for a whole new franchise,Starfield. This new IP is a first-person, single-player, sci-fi,space adventure RPG designed. According to Todd Howard, the game came out of the pre-production phase when it was announced, and it was in a playable state. Bethesda started to actively develop the game around whenFallout 4was finished, but unfortunately, no release date has been provided yet.
Considering its single-player nature,Starfieldhas to be a big game to be as successful asSkyrim. Hopefully, this will be the case on release, but recently there was a trend of releasing unfinished games and then improving and completing them via DLCs and expansions. The problemStarfieldfaces is not one that should be neglected, though, because if the game does not prove to be as rich in content as games the caliber ofSkyrim,then it may be destined to not retain players for long.
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Starfield And The Elder Scrolls 6
It is not uncommon for single-player games to be brief experiences for players seeking to complete the story, with some exceptions of some titles. This can be a problem forStarfieldif it happens to fall within the former category because its replayability will be limited, and this will damage the game’s overall success with lower player retention numbers.Competitors likeNo Man’s Skyhave had years to build upon their foundations, whileStarfielddoes need an extra quid for players to consider purchasing it at launch.
Of course, part ofStarfield’s allure is that it comes from the same developers of other beloved RPGseries, and that means that at least players can expect a level of quality that is above average. However, the game has not come out yet and it most likely won’t see much follow-up due to the studio having to focus onThe Elder Scrolls 6,possibly other projects, or maybe a newFallouttitle.Starfieldis a new IP, and it can either become a recurring series or it can be a standalone title.
One thing that Bethesda assured its fans with is thatThe Elder Scrolls 6will release afterStarfielddoes. This means that it’s very likely that most of the crew that worked on the new IP will switch over toTES6, and only a skeleton staff will keep working onStarfieldafter it launches. Players shouldn’t expect new content any time soon afterStarfield’s release, and of course, it’s too soon to talk about the possibility ofStarfield 2actually being a thing. However, it’s clear that Bethesda has a busy decade ahead of itself regardless.
What could happen is thatStarfieldreceives a few major updates to fix issues that were not transparent before it becomes available, and then there could be DLCs or expansions in between Bethesda’s big projects. This is precisely the reason why it would be beneficial for the longevity of the game that it offered a great number of things to do, places to visit, secrets to discover, and adventures to embark on when it launches, not later. Being a new IP, regardless of how many fans Bethesda already has,Starfieldhas got to yield some results besides sales. This holds especially true if Bethesda plans on expanding the game’s universe in the future or if there already were talks ofStarfield 2being a possibility, however remote that may be.
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Skyrim’s Success And How Starfield Could Learn From It
Skyrim’s success is not merely due to the fact that it was yetanother chapter in the belovedThe Elder Scrollssaga, but rather to the fact that it was (and still is, after a decade) an incredibly vibrant game.Skyrimoffered unique quests, stark new locations teeming with all sorts of lifeforms, lots of improvements from its predecessors, and plenty of exploring to do. To this day,Skyrimstill manages to surprise players with things left undiscovered for so long, which is incredible to think for a game that came out in 2011.
Many attributeSkyrim’s success to how accessible it becameover the years, with most consoles offering methods to play the game, as well as the re-release of the game in the form of a special edition and a VR adaptation. While these factors have quite possibly contributed to the overall extreme success ofSkyrim, it was its loving and dedicated modding community that kept the game alive for so long. New mods pop up every day, and some of them were masterpieces that changed the way people played the game and still do.
Starfieldshould build uponSkyrim’s legacy, despite the games being quite different from one another. Still, with all the assets that Bethesda has, it is in the realm of possibility thatStarfieldtoo will have a dedicated workshop for players to modit over and over as they please. After all, letting players modify the game in ways they enjoy is a win-win situation because of how happy gamers can be with the product, feeling they get multiple times its monetary value in terms of fun, and it is great forStarfield’s longevity.
Ultimately, if the game is as big asSkyrim, then it is safe to assume that its own bequest will become a benchmark forother Bethesda gamesor even for competitor titles to come in the future. WithStarfieldbeing a space adventure-themed game, and with it drawing inspiration from both the ’40s aviation and Elon Musk’s SpaceX, it may include a certain degree of difficulty with many elements to keep an eye on. Nonetheless,Starfieldis also coming with one of the biggest engine overhauls that the studio ever made, according to Howard, which hopefully does not affect the size of the game in the end, despite it taking a long time to finish.
Starfieldis in development.
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