Starfield devs want NPCs and companions to feel like ‘real people’
A new Starfield developer video has been released and it touches on the development team's ambitions for several elements of the game, including its factions, its companions and its NPCs.
Titled ‘Made For Wanderers’, the five-minute behind-the-scenes video features a discussion between Game Director Todd Howard, Design Director Emil Pagliarulo, Lead Quest Designer Will Shen and Lead Artist Istvan Pely, interspersing their discussion with new concept art for the game and even a very brief, actually moving clip.
Throughout the video, the team touches on ideas of player immersion and freedom, with Emil Pagliarulo describing Starfield as “a giant open world for the player to do whatever they want” and Istvan Pely citing a need to “embrace the chaos”.
This starts from the higher level of the game’s overall RPG mechanics, with Todd Howard saying that «it's nice with Starfield to go back to do some things we didn't do. The backgrounds, the traits, defining your character, all those stats.» Howard says he believes that “people are ready for something that does a lot of the things that older hardcore RPGs, something we used to do, doing those again in a new way."
It also extends to the NPCs and companions with whom the player will interact throughout the game. Istvan Pely touches on the team’s aim of realism, saying that while Bethesda have “always allowed the player to create really interesting, unique characters”, this time they’ve “definitely, severely leveled up. The tech is based on scanning of real world models, similar to the photogrammetry we do in our landscapes. We’re kind of applying the same thing to our people as well.”
This realism is part of the immersion, with Pely adding, “it’s not just the appearance of your
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