Starfield Designer Teases "Old-School" Approach to New Bethesda RPG

Bethesda spoke some more about Starfield this week in a Q&A with the game's lead quest designer Will Shen who shared some comments that should excite longtime Bethesda fans. When talking about the approach Shen's taking towards the quests in Bethesda's new RPG, Shen teased that Bethesda hopes to take an "old-school" approach to the game, an approach that consists of all the attention to custom character builds that RPG players would hope for in a game like this.

Shen participated in an in-house interview with Bethesda to share more details on Starfield and the designer's approach to that game. Given that he's in charge of quests, Bethesda naturally asked if he was approaching the quests differently in this game compared to past Bethesda games he's worked on (he previously worked on Fallout 3 and Skyrim).

"I think for Starfield a lot of quest design was going back to our old-school RPG roots: lots of dialogue choices, referencing the player's skills and background, a variety of combat and non-combat activities, and highlighting our brand-new setting in a way that signals where to go for what kind of stories you want to experience," Shen said. "We really tried to draw on all of our previous titles to build quests we were excited about."

While not necessarily indicative of what we'll see in Starfield, it was also interesting to hear Shen talk about what other games unrelated to this new RPG he found to be interesting in terms of their quests and objectives.

"I like weird stories that explore the fringes. So obviously Disco Elysium stood out to me when it was released, and Cult of the Lamb which came out just recently," Shen said. "A lot of experiences you might think a player will hate on paper, work with the right context and encouragement on the game's part. So Disco has incredibly embarrassing things the player can say and Cult of the Lamb asks the player to use their adorable followers like pawns. Both of those only work within the full experience of the game."

Starfield does not currently have a release date but will be out at some point in the first half of 2023.