Starfield isn’t ‘hard sci-fi,’ Todd Howard says, it’s a video game

Bethesda’s new video has more information Starfield, the studio’s first new original franchise in years.

The studio has launched Constellation Questions on Tuesday. It allows fans to ask Todd Howard questions. You can find a range of topics covered in the video, such as space flight, dialogue options and traits.

Howard began by addressing the source of his inspiration. Starfield. Two games were particularly influential to him: Sun DogFor the Atari ST, Apple 2, and Atari ST Traveller, a pen-and-paper RPG.

The fans were left wondering if they could be trusted to do the same. Starfield is “hard” sci-fi — meaning more rooted in actual science — or not. Howard believes Starfield to be hard scifi. However, opinions of fans will change. Howard said that it is still fun to play and that there are some frustrations associated with a more realistic science-fiction setting. One example is that the original game allowed players to run out space fuel, causing them to drift. That has since been removed, and player’s fuel and grav-drive type instead limit how far players can go at once. Although it’s unrealistic, fans will find this less disappointing.

Howard then addressed the game’s various traits, which offer both a positive effect and a negative trade-off. These are just a few of the traits shown in the video.

• The Dream Home – You can own your dream home on a tranquil planet but you will need to pay 50K in weekly credit mortgage
• Extrovert – You use less oxygen if you have a companion, but more if you’re alone
• Freestar Collective Settler- Get special dialog options, better rewards from some factions, and higher crime bounties when you play with other members
• Star Worshipped – Your rando lover will often show up to trouble you, but they will also bring gifts.
• Introverts have more endurance when they are alone than those who have friends.
• Stuff for Kids – Your parents can come to your home and you will receive 10%.
• Neon Street Rat- Get better rewards and special dialog options on Neon. Increased crime bounties are available to other factions.
• Raised Enlightened: Gain access to the House of the Enlightened’s chest, which contains items from the House of the Enlightened. However you will lose your access to the second chest.
• Raised Universal – Gain access to a Sanctum Universum chest with items, but you lose another chest

Players can eliminate these negative traits by fulfilling a quest, or engaging in an activity. Players who make a poor choice early on won’t need to restart the game just to re-roll their character’s traits.

Howard spoke briefly about the dialog system. The dialogue system is now point-based. Players can use points to persuade others. Howard revealed in this section that there are currently over 250,000 lines and 1,000 planets of dialogue.

Bethesda encouraged its players to send more questions using the Twitter hashtag #starfieldquestions. Bethesda & Microsoft are launching StarfieldExclusively for Xbox and PC consoles in the first half of next year.