STARFIELD
During Bethesda’s E3 2018 show we got a small glimpse at the company’s first new IP in approximately 20 years, Starfield. All we saw of the sci-fi title was a short announcement trailer that showed a sun emerging from the side of a planet and a star-shaped space craft warping off screen followed by the game logo seen above.
Since E3, there have been some hints that Starfield might be more focused on releasing in the next generation of consoles after PS4 and Xbox One. In a GameSpot interview with Bethesda Creative Director Todd Howard, he stated “I can’t absolutely say yes to [leaving current generation console behind]. We’re not going to limit the game that way yet. I’m willing to [leave current generation consoles behind] but it’s not a priority right now. I’d put it that way.”
When the announcement trailer dropped, Bethesda also tweeted the video calling Starfield, “our next-generation single-player epic.” While this is also clearly a reference to the fact the themes of Starfield are much more futuristic than fellow Bethesda series like The Elder Scrolls and Fallout, the choice of words in calling it next-generation is hard to ignore with so much speculation on when Starfield is said to officially release.
Welcome to #Starfield, our next-generation single-player epic, and first new franchise in 25 years. pic.twitter.com/0DM1N8Tf6l
— Bethesda Game Studios (@BethesdaStudios) June 11, 2018
In The Making of Fallout 76 Noclip documentary, Howard specifies that Bethesda is first working on Fallout 76 before moving onto Starfield and with Fallout 76 not releasing until November 2018, this would push back Starfield to likely at the very earliest 2019 with it possibly releasing even a year or two after that. Howard also stated in the documentary that the team is “…uniquely positioned to pull this game off.” Perhaps a reference to the time in-between console upgrades when Starfield will likely launch where technology will advance enough to be able to support a game of this size and caliber.
