We got our biggest look yet at Starfield in the Starfield Direct portion of the Xbox Showcase on June 11, but with so much content to digest, it’s likely you may have missed something.
Bethesda’s frankly titanic project offers something for everyone, with an abundance of side quests and stories to explore, over 1,000 planets to set foot on, and a plethora of customization options.
The developers have promised bigger and better than anything we’ve seen before in the Elder Scrolls and Fallout franchises, including their biggest-ever city in New Atlantis and more weapon mods than you will ever need.
If, like me, you were in a frenzy of excitement throughout as you started to plot your course through the stars in your head, then fear not, as I’m here to highlight some key things you may have missed.
Your robot companion can say your name
Starfield offers a variety of companions that you can recruit to your crew, who can also accompany you on your adventures in space and on planets. Some are humanoid, others are robots.
Robot companions are nothing new in games, nor are they new in Bethesda titles, and, like Cogsworth in Fallout, Vasco, the companion robot in Starfield, addresses you by the name you selected in your character customization. In the deep dive, we see Vasco welcome “Captain Howard” aboard the ship.
It’s still unknown whether Starfield will follow the route of its predecessor and have a limited list of preset names that can be read out, or whether A.I. will play a part and provide a more complex approach.
Hopefully, it’s the latter and hopefully, you can go crazy with it. I’ve already got TikTok reels playing in my head showcasing the mad levels of creativity you could have.
Base camps can be built almost anywhere
In Starfield, your ship is your home. But, if you want to create a more settled home, you can do exactly that. Base camps can be built almost anywhere on a planet, which can then be occupied by companions you recruit.
To help with building the perfect base, a top-down builder is available for the more fiddly parts, and it seems to be as detailed as you want it to be. Want a basic hut? Fine. Fancy a more upmarket build? No problem.
Perhaps more importantly though, we saw space hoovers. I got far too excited by seeing a Roomba-like robot moving around the screen but it makes sense. After all, you can collect sandwiches from enemies and create a mountain of edible trophies.
Just imagine the crumbs.
Related: How to get Early Access for Starfield
Ships can be stolen
Space combat in Starfield looks incredible, with the ability to shift power from different parts of your ship to help in different situations, like to your weapons and shields when you know it’s all going to kick off.
You can specifically target components of an enemy ship for more precise damage or take a more personal approach up close, docking with the enemy ship in true Star Wars style to feel like a real Stormtrooper, though hopefully one with better accuracy.
Ships you board can then be hijacked and added to your fleet, with flashes of the UI shown during Starfield Direct suggesting the maximum is at least nine, allowing you to find the right ship for every occasion.
With the customization options shown and the ability to rebuild a ship from scratch, component by component, creativity can run wild as you transform the stolen hunks of junk into exactly what you’re looking for.
Find love amongst the stars
Yes, you can find romance in Starfield. Previously available in Bethesda titles, romance is available in Starfield but has been confirmed to be much more detailed than in the past, with player actions playing a more important role.
To really hammer home the feeling of a true relationship, you can upset your partner in temporary ways, rather than permanent changes or the relationship ending. So, be warned that if you forget to do your space-washing, your spouse may have a word or two to say.
While we’re yet to see just how far these relationships will go, the ESRB rating for Starfield confirms that some relationships will be sexual in nature with “suggestive material,” although the absence of Nudity from the rating suggests it won’t be as full-frontal as the likes of Mass Effect.
We also saw that there is a way to end some relationships in the game, with the footage cutting out just as a pistol was drawn to the back of the head of an NPC. Whether you can kill anyone you come across, however, remains to be seen.
A role-player’s dream
Plenty of games have been given a new lease of life from the roleplaying community in the gaming world, with the likes of GTA V and Red Dead Redemption 2 being treated to custom servers where you can live out your life as you desire.
In Starfield, such mods will seemingly not be needed. When creating your character, you can choose aspects of your backstory with a previous job or role, providing some starter skills, with reveals so far including a chef, combat medic, homesteader, gangster, and Bounty Hunter.
When playing the game, these background abilities may provide a boost. We saw an apparent side quest with an NPC asking for the player to hunt a beast which, with the Beast Hunter background, led to a higher payout.
There are also traits that provide pros and cons in a variety of ways, with the deep dive highlighting the “Hero Worshipped” trait, featuring the return of the adoring fan from Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, while the “Dream Home Trait” gives you a small house on a peaceful little moon, alongside a 50,000 credit mortgage.
If you really want to flesh out a story for your character, including their history and the way they act, this can be done. It’s not known whether you can change your traits on the fly, though it does provide some replayability.
So, whether you want to be an old-time Bounty Hunter looking to put their old ways behind them or choose to go down the famous route and be a space influencer, the tools are there for you to go wild.
