Vortex Gaming

Today (12th, Korean time), Microsoft's 'Starfield Direct 2023' presentation was held. Following the Xbox Games Showcase during Summer Game Fest, this presentation focused on the highly anticipated title 'Starfield' being developed by Bethesda Game Studios, to introduce more detailed aspects of the game that can be revealed before its official release.

This presentation was expected to showcase new gameplay, developer interviews, behind-the-scenes stories, and more. If you're waiting for the release of Starfield, scheduled for September 6th, you won't want to miss the valuable information packed into this event.

In the showcase held in 2022, approximately 15 minutes of Starfield's gameplay footage was revealed, but this broadcast introduced almost all of the content that can be enjoyed in the game through about 40 minutes of developer behind-the-scenes footage. As Bethesda's Todd Howard, Executive Producer, introduced it as "a game where players can become who they want, get what they want, and go where they want," it can be confirmed that the game is filled with various galactic-level entertainment.

What kind of game is Starfield?
"Bethesda's first new world in 25 years, with over a thousand worlds"

'Starfield' is a new title developed by Bethesda Game Studios, featuring a new world for the first time in about 25 years. Executive Producer Todd Howard explained that Starfield contains over a thousand new worlds, not just one, and users will directly choose where and how to travel. Everything visible, from terrain to people, creatures, and objects, exists there, and even the moon in the sky is not just a background but a place that can be directly traveled to.

Bethesda's developers applied a next-generation lighting model and a new animation system to realistically implement the galaxy in Starfield, and players can always switch between 3rd-person and 1st-person perspectives to enjoy their adventure.

The basic gameplay of Starfield involves exploring landed planets, gathering resources, and carrying out missions, encountering unexpected events or entities in the process. You can engage in combat with enemies and acquire various items, including weapons, spacesuits, and food with detailed designs.

Starfield's developers have stated that they pursued a 'Nasa Punk' style in the game's visuals. The level of technology appearing in the game is so advanced that it cannot be found in reality, but the visuals capture a realistic 'retro, analog' feel. In fact, you can find old and worn-out visuals in spaceships and various objects that make them up.

The scale of the game, which is vast on a cosmic scale, can be felt in the process of looking at the star map and determining the route. On the star map, you can quickly check various information such as resources in each planet, and plan a journey on a scale that transcends star systems by determining the route to the target point several light-years away. The video also showed a demonstration of setting a route to travel directly through the star map and moving a long distance at once through warp.

Players can travel through space and visit huge cities like 'New Atlantis', filled with buildings that soar endlessly. The huge cities filled with crowds and quests will be places that provide a variety of content, packed with small-scale stories. The developers explained that they decorated the city to give the feeling that it is a space filled with real characters and where people live every day.

New Atlantis is also the city where you meet 'Constellation', a major NPC and companion group in Starfield, and it is truly the starting point of adventure. Constellation is the last group of adventurers remaining in the galaxy, and players can enjoy unique forms of adventure, such as finding alien artifacts and uncovering hidden secrets with them. Attractive members such as Sarah Morgan, a leader with a military background, Matteo, a theologian, Noel, a scientist, Walter, a financier and manager, and Sam Coe, a cowboy, make up Constellation.

In addition to New Atlantis, a city of the United Colonies, players can explore several civilized universes such as Akila City in the independent star system alliance 'Freestar Collective', and Neon.

Of course, you can't only explore places where people have touched. Just outside the civilized universe, there is an 'unknown star system' full of things that have not yet been revealed. This place is also full of hostile forces that oppose the player. Overcoming the limits of cities and settlements, and being able to get a glimpse of the future of humanity through the game, this is the vision that Bethesda wants to convey through 'Starfield'.

What can you do in Starfield?
"Experience a new world filled with galactic-scale entertainment"

Next, various contents that can be found in the Starfield game were introduced one by one. The first thing introduced was 'character creation', which can be said to be the beginning of the game. In Starfield, players can create their own unique character by utilizing various appearance information scanned differently according to age and ethnicity. You can select one of the 40 presets provided by default and add details to each.

Starfield's character creation is not just about setting appearance, but also a moment to decide what kind of person you want to be. Thanks to the character's background that can be selected in advance, you may receive unexpected help during the game. In the video, various stories that change in various ways depending on the choice of characteristics were introduced, such as creating a bond with parents by selecting the 'Children' trait, or safely escaping when encountering a group of fanatics with the 'Religion' trait.

Creating 'my own character' is further deepened through the skill system. You can earn skill points each time your character level rises, and use them to unlock various types of skills. If you raise the 'Boost Pack' skill, you can fly quickly through the air, if you raise physical combat skills, you will be specialized in combat using fists and melee weapons, if you raise stealth skills, you can move quietly through the vents and assassinate from behind the enemy, and you can peacefully solve difficult problems through conversation. In Starfield, another unique gameplay of your own is created depending on which skills you raise.

The introduction of 'spaceship', which is indispensable when exploring space, continued. In Starfield, a spaceship is another character and an important element that can be called 'home'. Players can purchase spaceships necessary for travel, and create their own spaceship through customization and upgrades. It is also possible to hire a 'crew' to manage the spaceship. The video introduced the process of decorating various spaceships, such as a sleek spaceship suitable for bounty hunters, a cargo ship with plenty of space that can be used for cargo transportation missions, and a frontier spaceship filled with the elements needed to explore various parts of the universe.

Decorating the exterior of the spaceship is, of course, an important element, but decorating the interior is also important. Inside, you can place various interiors such as manufacturing modules, residential spaces, cargo holds, and restaurants, and all of them function for their respective roles. If you make good use of these details, you can create 'your own spaceship'. In the video, you can also see unique spaceships in the form of platypuses, spiders, and mechanic robots made directly by the developers.

Recruiting a crew to live with, regarding the spaceship you decorated as 'a home to live in together', is also an indispensable content. Since each crew has different skills, you will find companions to join you not only from the members of Constellation but also from the outside world. It is possible to build friendship with them, as well as develop the relationship into love. If you place the recruited crew in each place on the spaceship, they will take charge of the operation so that the spaceship can move normally.

The 'space battle' that unfolds using spaceships is expected to be one of Starfield's attractive points that are hard to find in other games. Starfield developers described space combat as a 'tug-of-war between piloting skills and power distribution'. It is always necessary to consider whether to return limited power to weapons or armor and use it for combat, or use it for warp and use it for movement. If you raise the skills necessary for space navigation in the character skills, you can get help with combat or operation.

What stands out is that in addition to shooting down and plundering enemy ships, gameplay such as docking with enemy ships, boarding them, and taking control of the enemy ships is also implemented. The spaceship plundered in this way becomes the player's. It is up to the player to choose how to interact with and act with the various people you meet while navigating space.

Starfield developers have adopted a procedural generation method for unconfirmed planets to provide 'galactic-scale freedom'. When a player approaches a planet, the system is generated, and areas, creatures, minerals, and plants to explore are created. Through this, even if friends land on the same planet, they can encounter different stories.

How to interact with each planet is also up to the user's choice. You can simply capture the scenery in your eyes and leave, discover new vegetation with the help of a scanner, or quickly collect only the necessary resources and leave.

You can also set up a 'base camp' for exploration on each planet. Since residential modules of various sizes are provided, you can create your own home or assign companions to order them to automatically extract resources even after leaving the planet.

The 'weapon' system, which allows you to pursue your own play style, is also an attractive point of Starfield. In Starfield's combat, you can utilize ammunition with different characteristics, and utilize various weapons and parts such as silencers for stealth play or sharp knives for melee attacks. The developers have made several modifications to make the combat scenes look smoother and more dynamic, and introduced that they will be able to use more types of weapons than any other game so far.

The video introduced various forms of combat, such as being pushed back by the recoil of a gun in a place with no gravity, using energy weapons to compensate for this, freezing the enemy and then suppressing the enemy, or flying through the sky with a booster pack and throwing bombs. At the end of the video, a scene was shown where enemies were neutralized using superpowers like the Jedi in the 'Star Wars' series.

Starfield, officially released on September 6th
Collector's Edition and special goods, Korean language support is uncertain

At the presentation, various products released in conjunction with Starfield were also unveiled, including the 'Constellation Navigator Watch' in the Collector's Edition, which brings the details in the game to reality, the Starfield Xbox controller, and the first custom headset that can be used with the controller. The Constellation Navigator Watch acts as a compass and can be connected to a mobile phone to receive various notifications and other information, and will be provided with a case that brings out the details as if it were taken directly from the game.

Todd Howard, Executive Producer, who devoted all the presentations, also delivered a message saying, "There is much more content in the actual game, so create your own special moments in Starfield." Starfield is scheduled to be released on PC and Xbox Series X|S platforms on September 6th.

Meanwhile, even after the Direct event, the official Korean localization of Starfield has not been revealed. Currently, the Starfield page published on the Xbox Store and Steam shows that Korean is not supported. It remains to be seen whether the 'galactic-level freedom' that the Bethesda development team is talking about can be properly enjoyed in Korean.

웹진 인벤박광석 기자
2023-06-12