So what's Bethesda Starfield Game?
((Bethesda Image)
Here’s what’s useful to know about the hype around the game, and why Starfield may be used against Microsoft in its $68 billion bid to buy Activision Blizzard.
Starfield is a follow-up to 2011’s The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, which is one of the best-selling games of all time. Its director, Todd Howard, described Starfield as “Skyrim in space” in an interview with The Washington Post
Like Skyrim, Starfield is a sprawling, open-ended RPG that gives you the chance to freely explore a massive game world, while making whatever friends or enemies you want. Unlike Skyrim, Starfield is a science fiction game set in the distant future of our universe, which places you in the role of a 24th-century space explorer.
Starfield takes place in the Settled Systems, which extends for 50 light years away from Sol, after a period of space exploration that’s been extrapolated from current 21st-century technologies. You’re the newest member of Constellation, an order of explorers, which is on the hunt for a series of alien artifacts. Like other open-world Bethesda games, however, you’re free to ignore the game’s main plot in favor of unguided exploration, bounty hunting, or joining other organizations such as pirate fleets.
Starfield is the next big project from Bethesda Game Studios, headquartered in Rockville, Md., which became part of the Xbox network when Microsoft acquired its parent company ZeniMax Media in 2020. Starfield is the company’s first internally-developed original IP in more than 25 years.
Bethesda originally announced Starfield in 2018. In June 2021, after the Microsoft acquisition, it was re-revealed as one of the forthcoming tentpoles of the Xbox lineup, as well as the first big game from Bethesda that would be an Xbox exclusive.
If Starfield is even a decent game at launch, it could be a game-changer for the Xbox platform in 2023. It’s the effective successor to a wildly popular game, and one of the first big RPGs of the ninth generation of gaming consoles. That’s the sort of thing that sells Game Pass subscriptions, and maybe even Xbox hardware.
While Starfield doesn’t have a firm release date yet, it’s planned to ship as an exclusive for Windows PCs and Xbox at some point in the first half of 2023. Like most games from Microsoft’s internal development network Xbox Game Studios, Starfield will also be available at launch on the Xbox Game Pass.