21 March 2023 , 12:00
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Starfield is Bethesda's biggest AAA release since the launch of Fallout 4 in 2015, promising to whisk players away on a space-faring adventure of epic proportions.
We've been patiently waiting to blast off ever since it was first announced in 2018, but thankfully the wait is almost over. The wildly ambitious Sci-Fi RPG had an initial release date of November 11, 2022, announced during E3 2021. And yet here we are, in 2023, with Bethesda yet to deliver the game after various delays, but we at least have a new release date.
Despite a lack of Starfield gameplay trailers, we still know quite a bit about the game. A lot of that information has come from developer commentary videos on Bethesda's YouTube channel, which delves into the sci-fi setting, in-game quests, and companions.
There's plenty of information about Starfield if you know where to look. So to save you the trouble, we've rounded up everything we know about Starfield so far, including the game's current release date, the showcase, gameplay and more.
Starfield: release date
Starfield will be released on September 6, 2023, on Xbox and Xbox Game Pass (unless it gets delayed again, which is sadly always a possibility).
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The game has been delayed a number of times, having originally been set for a release date of November 11, 2022, echoing the famous release date for The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim on November 11, 2011. But, Bethesda announced via Twitter in May 2022 that Starfield had been delayed into the “first half of 2023”. It was then delayed once again in March, with Bethesda again communicating via Twitter that Starfield would be released on September 6, with the game to get its own showcase in June.
This is a bit disappointing, as rumours emerged in February that pointed towards June 29, 2023 being the release date, as suggested by a page listing leak on the GOG Galaxy app. If three extra months of polish is enough to get the game to where it needs to be, we don't mind waiting (although, knowing Bethesda, it'll likely still be packed with glitches).
Starfield: showcase
January's Xbox Developer Direct gave us a boatload of announcements and reveals regarding the platform’s 2023 release calendar. We now know Redfall is releasing in May, while Forza Motorsport and more were all given hard release dates or at least a specific time frame. Microsoft has bigger plans for Bethesda’s Sci-Fi RPG, however.
It was announced prior to the Xbox and Bethesda developer direct that Starfield would get its own dedicated showcase. We now know that the Starfield-specific showcase will take place on June 11, 2023. We don't have any specifics about what will be shown, but presumably it will work similarly to the Bethesda E3 deep-dive for Fallout 4 held before that game's launch.
Starfield: gameplay
The promise of 1,000 unique planets to explore wouldn’t mean a whole lot if the Starfield gameplay wasn’t on point. Thankfully, Bethesda and Xbox have lifted the lid various times via trailers, news posts and interviews as to what players can expect to be doing. Our first big Starfield gameplay reveal came last June, with 15 minutes of footage showcasing exploration on foot, third and first-person perspectives, gunplay and NPC interaction.
Dialogue trees will play an important role in Starfield, as they did in previous Bethesda RPGs, with your player-created explorer able to side with specific factions, barter to solve community issues and align with a particular way of thinking. Interplanetary travel a la No Man’s Sky won’t be included, but space flight is confirmed to be present in some capacity – as is ship customisation. Adult themes such as drug use will be explored in the story, too, as made evident by the Australian Classification board's decision to rate Starfield R 18+.
Last summer’s big Starfield gameplay reveal also dipped into the extensive character customisation options available, with hair, outfits and faces all able to be tweaked. Then you have the skill system which no fully fledged RPG would be without, consisting of trees such as Combat, Science and Social, that will let players pour skill points into their preferred areas.
Starfield: creatures and species
While Bethesda itself is yet to confirm any specific creatures set to appear in Starfield, plenty have been glimpsed in the handful of gameplay trailers released thus far. From the giant, crab-like Stalkers parading around the first moon of Crete seen during the game’s first gameplay showcase to spider-like Angler Hexapods that appear very aggressive when provoked, Starfield’s creatures are on full show if you know where to look. Here’s a small breakdown of every named creature we know of:
- Crete Stalker
- Angler Hexapod
- Siren
- Metropus Floater
- Trilobite
Creatures in Starfield will seemingly have different states and variants that can affect their behaviour (Bethesda)Interestingly, the small snippets of gameplay indicate that Starfield’s creatures can change states, which may or may not affect their mood and how they react to the player. As well as being dinosaur-like in nature, for instance, some Sirens have been dubbed Diseased Sirens, which has us wondering if other creatures may suffer from diseases too and whether or not such ailments can pass on to humans. Previous Bethesda titles like Skyrim let players cook using animal ingredients, so the same might be true for creatures in Starfield too.
Is Starfield Xbox exclusive?
An Xbox Wire post revealed Microsoft completed its acquisition of publisher Bethesda Game Studios on March 21, 2021. Since then, we’ve been operating under the assumption that games like Starfield – which were previously announced to be multiplatform – will be Xbox exclusive going forward. There have been a couple of oddities to this rule due to pre-existing agreements, most explicitly seen in how PS5 received Deathloop and Ghostwire Tokyo (two Bethesda games) first before eventually coming to Xbox later.
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Starfield’s Xbox console exclusivity has been reinforced by Microsoft numerous times in the many months since it acquired Bethesda. Most recently it did so when speaking to the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority when defending its planned acquisition of Activision-Blizzard, another third-party publisher. “The first Xbox and PC exclusive games will be Starfield and Redfall,” page 57 of the official document read, reinforcing how the Sci-Fi RPG will likely never launch on rival PlayStation.
Will Starfield be on Xbox Game Pass?
As a dedicated first-party exclusive on Xbox, Starfield will be a day-one release on Xbox Game Pass. This will likely be how most people choose to play it. Because while Starfield will be available for purchase separately both via the Xbox store as well as a physical disc, the markedly lower price point for a monthly Xbox Game Pass subscription will be too tempting to refuse for many players.
Bethesda’s Todd Howard confirmed in an interview with IGN that, much like previous Bethesda RPGs like Skyrim and Fallout, Starfield will receive a lot of post-launch content in the form of PC mods and then premium expansions and DLC. “Certainly we're going to be doing extra content for this game,” he stated. The exact kind of Starfield DLC wasn’t specified, but famously post-release content is never included on Xbox Game Pass. Only the base game will be available for members of Xbox’s premium subscription service.
Starfield: multiplayer
Though Starfield seems like the perfect multiplayer experience in which you could enjoy exploring the galaxy with friends, Bethesda is a renowned developer of single-player RPGs. It’s no surprise to learn, then, that Starfield is currently planned to be single-player only. We’ve known this as far back as 2020, when Bethesda’s Todd Howard referred to both Starfield and The Elder Scrolls 6 as “single-player games” in a Develop: Brighton interview (around 45 minutes in).