What Kind Of Sci-Fi Is Starfield? I Took A Deep Dive Into The New Gameplay Trailer To Find Out
After years of breathless anticipation, a leather-clad Todd Howard finally revealed Starfield to the world at the Xbox & Bethesda Games Showcase. This early look at Bethesda's spacefaring RPG amounts to less than 10 minutes of actual gameplay, but it packs a hell of a lot in. I'm a big science fiction fan, but not all sci-fi is equal. Curious to find out what approach Bethesda is taking to the genre, I decided to cast an analytical eye over the footage. Here's what I discovered.
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Starfield's gameplay reveal begins on a barren, volcanic planet with steam spewing from cracked fissures in the ground, scrubby red flora, a turquoise-tinged atmosphere, and skittering crustacean-like creatures. Later we see a temperate Earth-like world with blue skies, hanging ivy, and green trees. Maybe it is Earth, or a planet that's been terraformed to have a similar climate.
There's a planet with a thick, red Mars-like atmosphere and an underground cave with immense glowing crystals jutting out of the rock. We also see a lush jungle world inhabited by large, armoured creatures with bird-like beaks, an old-looking planet with strange symbols carved into ancient stone structures, and a Hoth-like ice world with a settlement surrounded by a vast snowfield.
While this is only a small sample of Starfield's 1000 explorable planets, it seems Bethesda is taking a grounded, realistic approach to its galaxy. The environments look nice enough, in a restrained sort of way, but none of it feels particularly alien or exotic. It may be astronomically accurate, but c'mon, this is a sci-fi game. I hope there are some wilder, weirder worlds out there to land on.
A thousand planets is nothing compared to the 18
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