Another Starfield Interview: Survival Elements, Vehicles, Romance Options and More!

in this new Todd Howard interview Todd actually speaks about the settlement systems and how you can funnel resources from different planets into your main settlement and use it as some kind of economy generator talks about other mechanics on the game like the skill systems the biggest thing for me though was when he talked about gravity bending I'm going to timestamp everything below but gravity bending is the little sort of power we saw at the end of the Starfield showcase where you lifted your hand and everyone kind of went flying he also elaborates on crew and playing the game solo and lots of other things so I'm super excited for this interview x-cast did a really cool job asking loads of community questions we really got to go 45 minutes in depth with your team looking at this awesome brand new game and you guys absolutely crushed it so congratulations to you guys that was really really cool but I want to talk about how do you build something like that with a direct I know your games are so big and there's so much to do it's probably easy to talk about that but how do you refine that into a tight 45 minutes where we are captured we aren't lingering on something too long and maybe you cut things out what is that process like for you in the team you know it takes a lot of time we've been fortunate enough to be able to give a lot of cool demos over the years going back Fallout 4 was always a highlight for us to do that we did a decent sized Starfield demo last year at I'll say E3 the Xbox showcase and I think at that time maybe it was 12 13 minutes for Starfield at the end that had been the longest demo that Xbox had shown and got a great response going into it this year we knew hey we want to give everybody a really deep dive look at the game and what's the best way to do that and so we're really fortunate I think to have that opportunity to do that kind of following the Xbox Showcase with it was crucial that Xbox gave them that 45 minute window for that massive showcase and I think we saw on social media how people reacted to it everyone suddenly had this renewed confidence in what Starfield actually was and the response really uh was incredible you know hearing so many people and the feedback everybody kind of rooting for us and and loving what we've shown you never know right we're heads down here in the studio and it had been a while since we had really come out with that much stuff you never know how people are going to react it's a new IP it's incredibly ambitious we're taking a lot of risks so um really happy with the response it's a lot of fuel to us here I will say the thing that actually makes me most proud of it is by doing it in that format we could highlight a lot of people on the team that fans don't know or haven't seen before and look there are hundreds more that we we couldn't show in it and sort of their passion for the project um we have all they've all put so much into this game and we just hope people love it as much as we do hearing all the passion that the developers have pulled into it really renewed my confidence in just how excited I was for the game the first question I'm going to ask Todd and and I'll take it from the direct just how I felt in the moment again there was an incredible presentation and the thing that I saw in that direct because I there's just so much information there was just such a data dump that you had of things that Starfield was going to be able to do but the kind of fun thing that I want to ask you which can lead into a bigger discussion is at one point you were basically a space pirate you could board a ship you could take the ship you could take everything you want on there all the sandwiches all those fun things but it kind of leads into outside of the main story The Discovery the exploration that you're going to be able to do in Starfield can can you kind of talk about that a little bit the in between sure I think if you look at all of our games that kind of feeling is what we want where you can look at the scope of the game and the sort of palette of things and menu of things you could do and then say what if and then I'm gonna go do these things and I think that idea of being a space pirate there's a whole faction for it by the way um or being a Smuggler or having Contraband and shielded cargo or taking over things those are all things that we think about as well and we want to find the best ways to enable that while it not feeling separate while it fitting in part of the game itself you see I don't think we knew about shielded cargo because obviously when you go to some planets your cargo hold will actually be scamful for Contraband Goods but shielding your cargo hold against their scans is pretty interesting but also obviously it being a Bethesda game I love the idea that you have the Thieves Guild and skyrockly here you've got a whole pirate-based Guild that's all about smuggling and I'm sure we can go and do that questline and then become the master of that Guild see that in the video I think when you ride arrive a Jemison where they actually do a Contraband and that you pass in that case so a lot of really cool systems and we do so many of them I think what's we really work on is how do all those systems come together and Collide and create some really really cool moments where the players yourselves have that agency to go really do what you want to do in the game one of my favorite things I heard told Howard said another interview he landed on a planet got a random Encounter of being attacked by some enemies and then he jumped onto their ship started killing them and then they took off into outer space again so obviously now he's in space he has to kill these guys re-land and obviously get his ship and his cargo back and he didn't realize that was something that could happen in the game when he talks about all these different systems that they've made coming together that's the thing that excites me about it how it surprises you there's going to be a lot to do in this game and I'm looking forward to that Todd really exciting stuff uh you talk about all the different systems at play and how big this is in the player freedom I do want to jump in right away because we got over a thousand Community questions written in they were very excited that you're going to be on this show and people really wanted to talk with you about some of this stuff uh of course a big one that Xbox has been pushing on the x-cat side of things is accessibility and of course you and your team have been doing this for many of years you've worked on these settings Xbox it's a big drive for them right now is is the accessibility program and making sure everyone can play around the globe you talk about players first what is it like creating a game that's so big and has so many systems and also mixing and accessibility settings is there something that stands out to you this time around well first I think Xbox has done an incredible job there with everything they've done with accessibility and their controller in particular you ask that one thing that we're really leaning in on with this game is having a large font mode which really is important in an RPG where there's there's a lot of stuff to read so it comes into play with obviously for accessibility but also various monitor sizes I'm noticing that that's really helpful when I play there's a lot more handheld devices coming out where you can stream these games or sometimes even play them natively and it really helps us there as well so that's one in particular that we're leaning in on absolutely that's sweet and you talk about handheld can you share with us is it steam deck compatible is that something you focused on or is that something we share later down on the road we'll talk about that later down the road uh yeah I guess it is let's jump back into the fun though because there's a lot of cool stuff Gary you might want to get into being a space pirate but I want to talk about the first steps creating the character you guys have now pushed backgrounds and traits into the fold of things and of course we've had the Stars before in Eldon or in Elder Scrolls what is it like now putting traits and backgrounds what are some of your favorites and what kind of uniqueness did you be able to bring into that I think for us we've done a number of games obviously over the decades that have various character systems and I think we've learned a lot in terms of how does it feel when you start a game what are those first choices like before you understand what the actual rules of the game are that's always a trick um to get right and then how much depth does it have if you're playing for 20 hours or 50. this is really impulsive because obviously there's some RPGs where people come to my channel and they'll watch like a build guide of how they should play the game without actually going a lot of people will do this without actually going and experiencing it themselves because they they're terrified that they'll make a mistake um and then they'll have to re-roll their character or start again because they didn't min max it and it kind of just didn't work out later in the game when they felt a bit weak in certain areas so I can totally get the issue behind this Todd Howard though doesn't really want to pigeonhole you into doing one specific thing too quickly but yet you still need the system to be interesting enough that if you've been playing for 100 hours that you can just repeatedly play the same game playing for 20 hours or 50 hours or 100 hours or 500 hours and so I think we've hit a real sweet spot with Starfield with giving you that flavor right out of the gate where you are going to pick some starting skills with your background but that also has flavor people want to role play they don't want to just see it as a list of numbers you know I'm a chef okay what is it what can a chef do how does that factor into dialogue or other choices in the game um and then so that's the backgrounds and the traits it's a little bit of a original fallback you know throwback to that to fall out excuse me and then say these are optional they come with positives they come with negatives and you saw some of that in the direct uh with the uh adoring fan and some other ones the parents is a really really great one that we all love so it lets you you know if you're going to start over even play the game in a different way I did like that there was actual meaning behind some of those traits that we saw with the adoring fan literally being an entire follower you get by choosing a trade and then the parents one adds two parents into the game game that you can go and visit like we're talking actual characters that you can miss engaging with depending on the starting traits you choose but also the commitment isn't so big that you feel bad for choosing the wrong starting trait can I follow up on that really quick just staying along those lines of the skill tree there's also the ranking system in there as well can you kind of elaborate on that a little bit too yeah sure those and what we've given ourselves there is a lot of flexibility and flexibility to the player first we have the visual right I actually love these patches badges that can go on a spacesuit and how they unlock and then they're tiered so as opposed to being a strict kind of tree you have to go down you can say I want to focus in technology and then the different tiers of skills will open up and it gives you flexibility within that there's five of them you saw that in the direct and and we are finding here what you always want is when people are talking about the game that they're saying did you know did you know it can do this or they're comparing characters and those character builds then those stories feel very very unique for each person in that conversation so right now you can say it's at rank two and the way you level it up is very immersive like you just have to pick another 15 locks and then you can unlock rank three and so on so it's a bit like Skyrim leveling but probably less grinding that you're just doing the thing you want to do to improve that skill I guess I should get Jazz corden's stupid question so just you understand the background here when we tweeted out that you were going to be on the show just coordinate our friend from Windows Central responded and said oh will you ask Todd this particular question and Paris just flat out flat out just said I'm not asking him that so then he DMS me he thinks I'm an easier Mark or whatever it wasn't your first choice but maybe an easier Mark it's actually not that stupid a question it's a big open world game Todd is this any kind of any form of um space fishing is there any kind of fishing activity that you can do because in open world games that is uh quite common and in fact it's maybe not that stupid a question because if you know anything about like you know exoplanetary um the search for life scientists will tell you the best chance of like finding life in the near future is like you know little alien fishies and squids on the under the ice of it's sort of a bad question because they added it into Skyrim and there's an entire questline for it Europa and in fact recently we just discovered that one of the key chemical building blocks of construct organic life might be present on one of the moons of Saturn it is so I put it to you Todd fishing or or no fishing well it depends on your definition of phishing so collecting fish killing fish or is it specific to is there some kind of Rod that I can put into a into a lake and pull out an alien fish and then sell it or or cook it or something that is one thing we do not have Okay expansion though this is on you that interview's gone bad now and it's down to him I like that let me try and Salvage this you say no to things yeah it's hard I'm really here to lower expectations yeah yeah and me me also try and pull it all in is right they're a little high they're a little well let me let me try and Salvage this and turn it in in another Direction which I think can lead to an interesting conversation so the thousand plus planets if there's been any concern that I've heard recently about Starfield it's been about handcrafted versus procedural so obviously with a thousand plus plan is a lot of it's going to be procedural and you even talk the way it works is you go to a planet the planet is procedurally generated using different tiles kind of like a lot of Bethesda games have done with their Landscapes and then the locations themselves that you'll discover are randomly placed but the locations are handcrafted so for example think of a location in Fallout 4 Fallout 3 or Skyrim that location could just be planted randomly on any planet that you happen to visit and because it's random that means you might discover locations on one planet your friend might go to that planet and then they'll discover different locations because it's randomly generated but the locations themselves have handcrafted requests and things going on around them however the quest we saw on the demo was like here's some local Wildlife that's annoying me going killer and that was it so I don't know if it gets more in depth than that in the direct about there will be kind of breadcrumbs along the way with handcrafted things that you'll be able to do as you discover these planets but my question is I I take it back to something like Mass Effect I remember when that came out super excited you know you could go to all these different planets and ultimately there wasn't a lot to do on the vast majority of them so with Starfield when we think about these thousand plus planets of course we want to go out and explore the Galaxy we want to see all of these things but when I get to these procedural planets is there really going to be things there to do that that are worth my time you know other than maybe there's a resource here there is it all just handcrafted or will there be procedural things that we could discover on these planets as well I think that's you know the million dollar question as it comes to a game like this it's a great question one that we honestly struggled with early in the project we wanted to do the planets because we like to give you that choice where do you want to go you feel like you would want that choice in a game like this and so first it was technically could we pull it off and you know we did technically be able to you know draw these planets make them feel believable on the screen um now obviously it's procedural okay so there's no way we're going to go and handcraft an entire planet what we do is we hand craft individual locations and some of those are placed specifically obviously the main cities and other quest locations and then we have a suite of them that are generated or placed when you land depending on that planet now I'll also say for us we view it as giving you when you look at a system here's the menu of things you could do and like science and we're pushing it about 10 percent of those planets have life on them we're pushing it to the edge of what do people think what planets are in that Goldilocks zone versus planets that have resources right you know I think it is it is a moment when you land on some of these Barren planets and again we will generate certain things for you to find on them but if you look on those locations by the way are going to be highlighted on the planet so you can just go there if you don't need to go and discover the location you don't need to land on every planet to see if there's anything going on unless you want to look at a planet you see the resources it has things you want there is I love the Buzz Aldrin quote the magnificent desolation I think there's a certain Beauty to landing on those and feeling I'm one of the only people or the only person to ever visit this planet um so I it's a difficult design thing if you add too many things if it's generating too many abandoned bases or Towers or things to find it starts feeling too gamey in some of those locations so I think we've dialed that in um pretty well depending on the planet that you're on and so um we hope everybody enjoys it for what it is but it is an exploration different than we've had where you're Landing you're exploring around that landing spot and then you're probably going somewhere else this actually brings me into one of my main concerns which is I don't know how stuff it's Gonna Fill like if you're playing Skyrim or Fallout right like you jump into the game you're running around this world and you see things off in the distance and you're like oh there's a castle there I want to go and explore and you've got to like run through the forest and there's like a little Bandit Camp hidden in the forest that you encounter it it's the 30 second rule of seeing something in the distance and then wanting to go and explore that it's kind of like a child in a sweet shop but with Starfield it's not like that because you're constantly in this map interface and going between loading screens between space and planets space and planets and I don't know if that's going to ruin the Bethesda exploration experience it's gonna be different and I just want to know what that feels like I really need to play it I really need to tell you guys what that feels like because I feel like that's gonna like really make or break I'm pretty sure I'm gonna enjoy this game but if I enjoy it like exploring other Bethesda games that's the thing I want to find out but I think it's relevant here when we're talking about planets is again I've probably watched this direct like a thousand times at this point so uh one thing that I did notice was some Planet biome diversity it you seem to highlight one planet where we did see different biomes on that particular planet now I'm not expecting that on every planet but this is something that you're conscious of that that you're doing in the game and it leads me to two questions I'm just thinking the size of some of these planets is there really going to be this giant map that we're going to be able to to explore across different biomes and find obviously interesting things and resources and creatures but the other part of this is and this comes to more to just the diversity of the planets when I think about gravity temperature radiation things like this are we going to have to prepare ourselves to actually be able to land on some of these plans and explore them or is it just going to be if I can get to the planet I can land and do do whatever I need to do good question we have a lot of biomes we do look at temperature we look at the radiation we look at all of those things on a planet so that your suit and your protection you can get certain ailments if you're not ready and certain whether things can come through um with all of that so on Fallout 4 out of it to Skyrim survival mode and it was kind of like a more intense hardcore version of the effects that not eating freezing and all these other things had on your character and I saw these stats on the spacesuits that protect you against certain Elemental effects which I love and I know there'll be a modder out there who makes a hardcore version but I am interested to know how casual or hardcore it is I feel like because it's a Bethesda game it's going to be more casual starting out there are obviously planets that might have one type of biome and there are planets that have a whole bunch and they're creatures and the plants and everything go with the biomes so there's a whole part of the game where surveying a planet like discovering all of the flora and fauna and resources plants also have traits usually geological things that are inherent to that planet and uncovering those and if you fully survey a planet that data is actually worth a lot of money credits in the game that you can sell so there's a whole part of the game that's really just doing that it's a little more that's really cool because I thought it was just kind of like oh you got some experience you finish this planet but obviously you've surveyed an entire planet you can actually go and sell that data which is really cool is those extra features and mechanics that I really am interested in learning more about or I almost describe it Zen lights in the game that you can sell so there's a whole part of the game that's really just doing that it's a little more I almost describe it zen-like it's not even get on a planet where the creatures there some of them can be aggressive where it can get dangerous if you're exploring the planet and you can watch the creatures we've actually had a problem at times with The Predator creatures going and killing all of the more peaceful creatures you're coming across yeah and then you realize there's something dangerous in the area so I would say this that we we do everything that you mentioned and we really try to mix it up and spend a lot of time balancing that so it is fun minute to minute but you also know what you're getting into May first person to a hundred percent survey every single one of those thousand plus planets Todd I want to talk about the plants and the creatures I guess I'll start with the creatures really quick of course some iconic Bethesda creatures the deathclaw the dragons and and uh Elder Scrolls is there going to be a special creature in this or will there be so many that there's not just one that we all point to and say oh wow that was the bad one I mean there's definitely there's a few bad there's one really bad one there's a few you have to play it okay I like that and then I I'm I'm glad he said that because I kind of want I think there's gonna be like a dragon-like creature for example like imagine imagine they just had like a giant like June sandwork but it wasn't on a planet it was just like flying through space eating ships and stuff that was like the dragon version of Starfield that just kept you on your toes one of the most asked questions was Todd we land on these planets and people are blown away by the size and the scope of things is there a land vehicle or an option to maybe Mount some of these Wildlife creatures to you as a land transportation motive mode of Transport we can ride them uh there is not you know we do design it I think when we we've seen this with our other games where we want to design it so it feels good on foot but we do have the Boost pack you saw some of that in the video and you have skills for the Boost pack so the Boost almost acts like this vehicle super fun where you can fly through and then the low gravity planets are just um really really something special in the game under this hog gravity planets where you just like can't you're just constantly overcomfort like every Bethesda game I feel like with Bethesda if they can't do something right and it's not going to feel good they don't put it in the game and I think Vehicles is one of those things I wouldn't be surprised to see a mod Creator do this though if I could pivot this into companions um question about that as far as companions crew members um and some of the individual skills that they're going to have in in the direct it was clear that you'll have some crew members here though you'll have some that you can station at an outpost but I'm curious even with that will we have the option to just play the game solo without any companions or crew members or is that going to be a necessity as as we're playing through the game and along those lines crew members or is that going to be a necessity as as we're playing through the game and along those lines can crew members on their own Throne decisions decide I don't want to do this anymore and they leave oh yeah okay t1's there um our team's done a really really great job with them and there's a lot of great depth there with the main companions but we do support where if you don't want to do that there's traits that really make you you know I want to play by myself and then there's also skills that go into that that give you special perks and bumps if you are Solo the them leaving on their own they can depending on the choices you make they can get angry with you yeah um and then the relationship that you have with the companion can change based on the decisions you're making in the game okay so the relationship can change but they can't leave your service it'd be quite funny to play through where everyone just absolutely hates your guts but they just happen to stay alone for the right if I get mad at my companions Todd can I space them and take them and make them walk the plank on my spaceship you can leave them behind you can tell them where to go you can assign them you can assign them The Outpost you can assign them to ships that you're not using and things like that uh I have a fun one coming in from the community Courtney writes in and says are the constellation companions the only ones that are able to be romanced a lot of people very excited about Romancing NPCs what is the breadth of that is is there a wide range the four main constellation ones are the ones that support uh full quest lines for them and romance right okay also I had another great one someone wrote in and said could my crew on my ship be all robots is there a possibility of having enough robot companions slash crew members to be an all robot uh Starship technically yes that might be another Robo companion we don't know about now on the romance side I do want to add this instead of the romance like in Skyrim where it's very surface level and you can just kind of marry almost everyone I prefer it when romance is just done right now I don't know if they have done it right or what right even looks like but I'm excited to see what it is like there's a very thin line between cringe and this is amazing so weird the questions that people come up with yeah and then there's a few other things but okay okay that's not to the extent of the humans obviously I think I think one of the challenges of making a game like this is is that when you say oh it's you know a million planets and you can go do anything you want that people are going to ask some some dumb questions like well can I can I go space fishing you know and and you realize that for every one thing that you can do in a game like this there's still going to be 100 other things that you cannot do because we're not there yet but you know well look that's what we do in the studio right when you're doing a game like this or the games that we have done we ask all the same questions right and it's how do we say yes as much as possible so the actually they're not like should you fish it took us a while we finally added it to Skyrim right so um so there's hope there's there is hope for space fishing get on the road who's getting attacked role-playing games in general that they're not defined by a certain feature set right Todd I want to talk about the music because I know music is very important to you and the team and it's something you kind of Base a lot of things off of and we've seen music really get a lot of shine in the gaming industry over the past couple of years which is all due and that deserve right I want to talk about how you build music into an open world game like yourself right where maybe me and Gary never hit the same points or how do you make sure the music hits at that right perfect moment if I'm 30 steps the wrong direction or maybe I never hear that kind of music what is that like creating music around such a big freedom-driven open world game well actually music is one of the first things that we start with when we make a game we do concept art and we start writing the music I think the music for Starfield the the work that Enon Zur has done there is just incredible as could be my favorite game music and we did that very very early so when we're working on the game we're looking at the concept art the music is giving us all a feeling of what this world feels like what this experience feels like how we do that in in an open game is there is a whole system behind like what is happening what's the mood right now and then it is pulling from you know a collection of tracks that that fit that mood and then segwaying between them and it might be easy to say oh you're just going to do this all the time but the trick we find is actually when it has time to breathe when the music actually kind of subsides for a bit so that when it does come on and we're trying to hit a certain mood that you're in it's impactful I've also noticed and happy to hear from all of you but sometimes the music can come on and maybe it puts you it puts you in a mood like oh you're hearing this music and you're like oh I think I'm feeling I should do the following now and then it puts you in a certain mood that you weren't in before so we we get some of that sometimes not intentional but it's not a bad thing since we're talking about audio I guess I should ask the other question that we were talking about before before the show and this is a will will the game have this we were talking about how much we love in-game radio stations and Fallout obviously is one of the better examples of that is there any kind of space radio that we'll be able to listen to as we're exploring there is one but it is pretty much local to a certain location but there is a little bit a little bit of that cool I love in-game radio yeah we were talking about that of course the radio host Todd did you ever think to yourself I would like to be the radio host for one of my video games put me behind the the microphone Let Me Go Wild no I don't think that's for me uh and actually you know the last DJ we we had in Fallout 4 is Brendan hunt who everyone knows is coach beard on Ted lasso that's amazing I didn't know that that's awesome yeah he's incredible in the game I mean if you're ever looking to add like a wacky kind of morning Zoo Trio to the to the Starfield you know radio Universe you know and you know who to call thanks Gary yeah space bike Mike yeah anytime this writes itself I told you the creative process was easy it's like falling off of a log so easy yeah to get it back onto Starfield directly but to Todd um one question one question I I had was was about ship building and I'm trying to keep this limited also the ships that you acquire so obviously we we saw during the direct you can build your own ships you can let your imagination go wild you mentioned in there that to reach the far reaches of the Galaxy you will have to upgrade your ship you know along the way which makes total sense but me wanting to live out my space pirate fantasy in the game if I'm acquiring certain ships whether I purchase them or a quote-unquote steel one are those ships locked in at whatever quote-unquote stats that they have at that time or are they upgradable in ways as well may the shipbuilding system is just like you can literally Go full hand build whatever you want it's just a skeletal base every ship you see in the game is built with this system that's how it works they're all upgradable they go through the same we built those ships with the builder that you all saw in the direct when you steal one we do make you register it if you want to modify it or use it in those ways you have to spend credits to go register it and that's for us to keep it from the economy kind of spiraling uh in in those ways you can fly it around but if you want to if you want to mess with it you register it that's interesting because I was like oh my God it's going to be so easy to make money in this game because you can just go out still enemy ships or even friendly ships and then just go and sell them all but obviously you have to register it so you have to pay to register the size or scale of the ship what kind of features it has and then you can use those components or even upgrade them but I'm pretty sure that's going to be like a best ship that you can get early on method um and then you go through that whole Loop of upgrading it I will say that that's a very deep system and one that we expect for late game it's not like you start the game and then you're gonna get right into shipbuilding it is it costs a lot of credits yeah um it is in a good way a very complicated system and one that it was more of a longer term thing in the game you can easily upgrade your ship like just go in and say I want to improve these weapons I want to improve the grab drive or the shield make it red goes faster that's very very easy to do but where you go in that mode and you break it apart in your building that is a whole mode onto itself that is more of a long-term play kind of thing me and Tim this is more of a fun question but we saw this in the direct as well and if you don't want to answer it I completely understand but if I'm going to new Atlantis and they scan my ship and I do have Contraband what happens yeah you don't have to wait and see I look forward to that I feel like that modular shipbuilding stuff yeah it's really cool I can see people getting totally lost in that maybe this was addressed in the direct I don't know but like once you once you build your ship you're designing kind of the internal layout of the ship that you'll walk around in as well is that correct yeah it comes with it so you have these modules and they they come with the inner parts as well and then when you click them together and obviously you saw there are different modules for different things so that that gives the ships a really really unique feel and I'll say when we designed the game originally when you go into sci-fi we sort of start with what kind of spacesuit do we want what does that look like what are the weapons look like and it took us a long time on ships because there's so many ships and games and how do we do them where they they look cool but they feel believable where you can draw the line from where we are today to these kind of ships while also allowing the player to build them so that that actually along with the planets was a big challenge for us and I I we all love where it's ended up that's great I have kind of a nerdy Tech Law question one of the things I love because you know I I love the the nerdy science stuff and I I'm sure that that bethesda's got its own route into this as well but like one of the things I loved about Mass Effect was they had really cool explanations for faster than like travel and even faster than light communication right the master relays would get you around and the quantum communication would allow instantaneous communication over like the span of light years I presume that Starfield has its own version of All That Tech Law right this is how we're able to travel faster than light this is how we're able to communicate faster than quite grounded definitely I mean we say grab drive here but it stands for the graviton loop field array the way the different bands band space in front of you and the more it can bend it and you're actually taking space and you're folding it you're bringing the space towards you there's some great papers out there on like warp drives and quantum physics I was gonna say this is not a dissimilar to warp drive right where you can track the space in front of you and expand the space behind you that's what it is and we do get into with the game gravity and how that affects um you know people in this universe how they bend it how they feel about that Oh Oh that's oh my God that's huge he was talking about you know at the end of the Starfield trailer where we see him actually using some kind of gravity power right in the end that seems to affect everyone so he's talking about gravity bending how to let Earth bending from Avatar or air bending gravity bending and how people actually react to you doing that because it's kind of like you know if you're playing a necromancer and the Elder Scrolls online and you just start summoning dead in town people are like whoa what are you doing you know that's against the law and so forth so we do a lot of interesting things there but to your point Gary we we did spend a lot of time originally what is the fiction of this new universe that we're building and how do we get from today to the tech level of this game and have that it's still a video game right so I don't want to like over promise you or anything but make that for the reality of this game feel believable right you know I do want to say as well another Point obviously like with Fallout Civics coming out it was a really difficult launch uh it didn't go very well obviously Todd Howard and and in a few interviews a long time afterwards said that he disappointed fans on that he was sorry about you know what happened with that um obviously the game's completely changed now but he just said there he keeps saying he said it twice in the interview now and I think intentionally he doesn't want to over promise it's a video game and I think that partly that is because of what has happened previously when he's over promised and will all just hype things up you know we're part of the problem but he's kind of you know he doesn't want to over promise things we saw it with no man's sky as well get excited about the game but hey it's like here's what it is here's what the gameplay is like and I feel like that's why that 45 minute Starfield presentation was also so good because it just showed you this is the game this is what the developers like to do in the game here are some of the mechanics and systems and how they work and it was just like that's it it wasn't like this crazy like whoa look at this bro everything's amazing you know it was much more grounded and it felt that's what everyone I think after watching that felt a lot more comfortable they felt a lot more confident about the game and what it's going to be like obviously it's not out yet but you do you know what I mean like I feel like that is an important takeaway and I appreciate him saying stuff like this stay on Tech with you really quick because I know you're a big Tech Guy and of course we see the Xbox series X and of course PC is continuing to push the level of tech for game developers like yourself and the team what are some of the benefits you've seen with the creation Engine 2 maybe Dolby Atmos are there things that really stand out to you going man I love that we can utilize this or I can't wait for the future to continue to push this good question because Elder Scroll six is next you know we are just so happy with the the new engine it took us so long to do our Tech Team their Wizards you know led by Chris Rodriguez and Joel Denault and what we're able to do in the game and have all these things looking amazing and running from all of the items that we're simulating in people's spaceships full planets our lighting model is just awesome the real-time GI we have we didn't really show this off but I'd love to in the future which is we have some great volumetric fog and how that interacts with the lighting then you get into the physics and we start messing with gravity it gets even crazier um our Quest system I think people are you know there are a lot of open world games now but I think what really makes ours different is that you all these quests are running it's not like you start a mission and we shut everything down you can be on dozens of these at once and that creates obviously it creates a lot of chaos sometimes in our games we're aware of that but it also creates these magic moments that that we just love and our players love and I think that's what's what's really really special about it well Todd that actually leads me into one question that I know the community has been asking a lot uh since the Xbox showcase fantastic interview you did with Ryan McCaffrey and you did a dress why Starfield is 30 frames per second totally understand it totally get it think digital Foundry did a great job following that up but my question to you is was it ever under consideration to potentially do a performance mode that you would take away some of these features like you just talked about with with the volumetric fog he's about to answer the question but like I said in the other interview it's just not something they think about we never looked at taking features away our focus is on delivering all of that um obviously we've we've seen all those comments digitally found digital Foundry they do an incredible job I don't think they know how everybody in the game industry watches every single one of their videos they do a fantastic job um and ultimately look we boil it down to we wanted the consistency game is running great but we don't want players to ever think about it um we have obviously seen other games that have performance modes and we lean toward consistency overall and we you know talk to our fans and hear that from everybody um so we're feeling really great game feels great in your hands and I would say like developers know this but there there are things that you can do to make that look and feel great um things like motion blur how fast the game refreshes or reacts to a controller input all of those things matter to something feeling great and I I can honestly say this is the best feeling game uh that we've had awesome awesome to hear I have a I have a question and this is mainly because it's been on my mind recently because like a lot of people I'm playing a lot of a lot of Diablo for and I love Diablo 4 but it also reminds me a lot of what has become very kind of calcified and very familiar and gamey to me we were just talking about this before the show so Todd I wanted to ask you like how you approach things like side quests and trade I don't know if you feel like it's necessarily getting trying sorry it's just a completely different game bro like it's not even similar try and break this cycle and get away from it but for me it's starting to feel very old where I walk into a village in Diablo or any one of these these kind of games and here's my side quest space Band it sold stole my trousers go kill 10 of these Bandits one of them will drop somebody bring it back to me and I'll give you a better hat and I just what he said just there is relevant though because one of the quests that we see in the Starfield direct is like hey there's some local pests or creatures annoying me on Market on your map here go kill them and and that's the exact sort of like they're not side quests like all the other Elder Scrolls or Fallout side quests that are actually like really really interesting if not more interesting than the main quest and me camel works and Co do like 40 minute lore videos about one side quest like the Red Guard woman in Skyrim those are the real Bethesda side quests but then you obviously have the radiant quests which is what this guy's talking about which yeah Diablo's four quests are like this it's a quite an old school game design really but I don't want to get into that but those like Go and Kill 10 rats quests are like the extra quests that the game engine just creates out of like a catalog to give you just to do something to get experience or feel like you have an objective those are not really side quests give you a better hat and I just feel like I've been doing this same for like 30 years and I'll still do it because that you know push the button get a pellet dopamine hit still works but I I wish we could find a different side quest or dynamic or a different way that didn't feel so like gamey is that and I don't know if there's a question you've asked yourself over the course of developing so many games or on this game top like do you get what I'm talking about when I feel like a lot of these quests feel like generic video game quests and how do you okay so this is interesting because I think AI like will change this and I've done some videos about aimpcs though currently I think you would really need to rein them in in a video game because if you just let them go kind of like Todd tried to do with Oblivion NPCs would be killing each other for food you know because it was one of their needs and it made sense even though morally to us it wouldn't make sense how do you break out of that saminess yeah and to show how much I listen I believe you mentioned that on an earlier podcast yes I told you Todd wasn't full of he actually um yeah he said I guarantee starfield's gonna have some of this yeah I mean because it's it's hard to completely reinvent the wheel but like I don't know I just feel like it's it always reminds me that I'm in a video game when someone tells me a story like that like somebody stole my my pet cat go find it and I'll give you some space gold or you know a better pair of gloves or something I don't know it just it feels like we've just accepted that that's what side quests are now and I wish there was a way to approach them differently is there anything in in this in the side questing often the main quest line in style field where I'm gonna go oh that's a different way to do a side quest that's cool when I was interviewing Ted Peterson the creator of the Elder Scrolls I'll link That Into You Down Below he was basically saying that there's only several ways you can write a story and really they've all been done and now we're just trying to come up with new ways to write that story so all about the delivery and the journey of getting there well look it comes down to making all that content and we are our folks have done an incredible job there and they're just there really is a lot of it we have a lot of specific quests but it's not what you're talking about the sort of random one-off ones I don't think it's mutually exclusive we obviously have a bunch of that right you can land on a planet and go to an outpost and we're going to generate a mission nearby and you're going to see some of that but I think that's okay if you know you're in for it and those activities if the gameplay is good can be fun but they shouldn't take the place of those more in-depth ones and we've done a lot of those right yeah Todd you talk about content I'm gonna because obviously in Diablo for a lot of the side quests do boil down so that there are some really good ones there start ramping us down so guys over there start thinking of your final questions for Todd I want to be respectful of his time and get us out of here in a timely manner but talk about content Todd and of course you and the team and thinking about what you guys can create but also there's the side of the mods and you know your team at Bethesda have done a really great job with mods and allowing the community to create and build within your world have you seen something that stands out to you in previous games through the community where you go man Oh I thought he was going to ask about if they're gonna have mods and stuff and how they're going to do that and their plan for like creation club and these rumors about the marketplace that we've heard about and that team did a really great job that is awesome on The Mod side of things and of course moving forward are you excited to put mods into this game with okay so many planets to explore and the opportunity to create yeah I think Starfield is going to be kind of a modders paradise it's part of our DNA here we've been doing it for over 20 years and our community around that because look we've usually been classically single player that has been our community and people are still modding uh our games and playing them so we're doing a lot of it and I think one of the things that I'll call out is it's it's important for us not just to enable that but to participate right to make it easy for them to make this where they can make it not just a hobby but a career we've had a lot of great success there so a lot of the people who are doing Fallout London actually got employed by Bethesda who knows what they're working on looking forward to what everyone's going to do with Starfield just like cannot imagine that's awesome I'm gonna be very excited for that question I have as as we wrap this up there's a thousand more I would love to ask but uh we want to be respectful of your time outposts you kind of slightly mentioned that a few minutes ago but something I caught again during direct towards the end was it sounds like there's going to be kind of an advanced feature with some of these outposts where you can actually leverage some of the plants and animals on the particular planet that you're on to generate resources which then made me think about well if I land on a planet am I Limited in the resources that I can use to build an outpost in other words is there only so much I can do without is it unlimited what I can do with foreign outposts is what I'm trying to say can I build whatever I want or do I have to have a certain amount of resources to build whatever you know design that I'm thinking of at that time good question so outposts kind of like I was talking about with shipbuilding is a very deep system and it does involve a lot of resources to really you know do what you want to do you can do all that so you can land on a planet and start building but you're going to need to really go crazy you're going to need to develop your character skills you're going to have to collect those as resources but there is there is a ton there and you can even actually somewhat connect them between planets shuttling uh cargo between them so it's a really really cool system but you know I will say again like shipbuilding one that has a lot of depth it's obviously if you could find the best plans for each resource and then set up a base on each one have these systems or robots costing resources all to your Central Main base you'd basically have an unlimited funnel into your main economy of building like just a ridiculous space and that's what I'm gonna do and that really meant as like an early player kind of system it's meant to be one that you're going to play over a long period of time well that brings me on to just a quick follow-up on that so potentially you can Outpost be in economy generator for you as well yeah yes they can absolutely fantastic yeah what are the final questions for Todd I always like to ask at least one question from the point of view of like a Creator because I I create stuff and I'm always really neurotic about putting out into the world are people going to like it I just wanted to ask as we close in on the final months now this game you know going out into the world and it being a Big Moment of Truth after all these years of development like where are you emotionally typically at this point and where are you right now with this one like is there a certain amount of confidence like we know we've got the goods and it's all going to be great or is there always that little bit of imposter syndrome Neurosis like oh you never know until it goes out into the world like where are you on that Spectrum you've been through it Gary you have something we've worked just so hard on it I'll say again the team here many of us have done this for decades together in in some cases and we have put just everything that we think we've learned and a maximum effort into this one and look we we love it and our fingers are crossed that everybody feels the way that that we do about it um and we're just really kind of humbled by everybody's excitement for it and it's it's fuel for us you know over these last few months to make it you know as good as it can be for everybody do you feel any additional pressure given I mean obviously this and this is not even within your control it's just kind of the way that the history of Xbox has worked out that you know there's been The Vibes have been off with Xbox for a little bit like where are the games and where are the big big games and starfood has kind of emerged as just wait for staff we'll wait for Starfield this is going to be this is going to be like it kind of feels like you know that's not really their fault though like I feel like there's been a lot of games that people have hyped up and they didn't really live up to the expectations now Xbox have kind of kept Starfield on that this is their Golden Goose that they really need to perform and that really puts a lot of pressure on Bethesda especially after they're just purchased by Xbox for a lot of money this is going to be their first major game that Todd Studio Bethesda game studios which is a different group within the uh xenomax umbrella they've just been working eight years on Starfield obviously we know Elder Scrolls 6 is in pre-production so there is a team on that and obviously now Elder Scrolls 6 entered full production considering starfield's about to launch and they have a smaller DLC team working on that that's what they've always done with their previous games so I get the pressure when they read in Star Wars right they paid four billion I remember JJ open said this movie didn't cost 150 million it cost four billion dollars because that's what we paid for start for Star Wars and this is the kind of thing where like if something that big the the stock price of the parent company moves on how these these these Mega you know tent pole things are received do you feel do you feel like you're carrying like the weight of like Xbox on your shoulders right now when when that's kind of the narrative that seems to be emerging like staff it was going to be the standard Bearer for Xbox this year I think I was feeling better before you asked that uh look we're focusing on what we can do um like I said on this game and I would say Xbox has been just their support has been incredible on this uh with Phil and Matt booty and the team over there and obviously we worked with them along you know for a long time going back 20 years on Morrowind but being part of Xbox and their support has really you know it has allowed us to be this ambitious and uh take these risks and fingers crossed that's great Paris one more for you I see you sneaking in it too quick yes or no no one's for you are there black holes in this game and my dear friend Emily she would kill me if I did not ask this can Vasco wear a hat like Mr handy did in Fallout 4. I'm gonna pass on the first question ah interesting Bob can Bosco wear a hat not apparently but I'm sure that will be an early mod but yeah I'm sure 100 uh Todd of course I want to thank you for joining us today I have two quick small ones for you have you ever thought have you ever wanted to do a smaller project you and the team Todd have created these massive incredible games have you ever thought about making a small game like a little pensament kind of thing on the side yeah we have the mobile team we did a fallout shelter which I think is our most played game ever at this point so we we do some of that we have some mobile stuff going too that looks really cool that we haven't talked about so I think this mobile game is Starfield themed I wouldn't be surprised it's not some kind of fds top down spaceship management sort of game because they've done the Fallout show again they've done the Elder Scrolls blades game come on like Starfall's been development for eight years they've not talked about this secret mobile game I was expecting it to be revealed along with Starfield like they did with The Fallout Shelter but Keen to know what it is we get to dabble in that but at the end of the day you know I as a player I like the big worlds that I can get lost in that's why you know many of us here wanted to make games um and it's it's really really rewarding for us and just so thankful for the opportunity and and thanks to you know thankful to be here with you guys today so I just hit the nail on the head Danny you'll have heard me say this on the podcast before that my favorite kind of games are not not me thinking about like a game that I'm gonna go play but like a place where I'm gonna go and a world that I'm gonna get lost in Mass Effect was that for me yeah Los Santos was that for me and that's why I'm excited about starfielders I want to just forget that's Bethesda game my real life not that my real life sucks it's pretty good but I just want to forget about it and go visit a million planets and hit space aliens on their head with a camera well that is the perfect way to end this Todd thank you so much for your time thank you certainly thank you to you and your team for creating games that I love that we love on this panel and that the audience loves that is a really special one that you guys get to do so thank you for everything we have a lot more there were some incredible questions on the ncu and I'm really glad that's odd Howard's doing these you know at this point I just kind of want to play the game and get get a feel for what it's like and then tell you guys my feelings about it but every time I watch these conversations and what's discussed everything just feels very grounded quite realistic that the game's going to be like that now if you guys are interested about the Elder Scrolls 6 and Fallout 5 timeline watch the IGN interview I'll link it just over here I've time stamped where those questions are so you could just skip to them but they're super interesting Ryan does a great job interviewing Todd as well so I highly suggest checking that out I'll see you there

Channel: ESO

Views: 115,257

Keywords: starfield, starfield mods, todd howard, todd howard interview, starfield gameplay, new starfield gameplay, starfield trailer, new, starfield interview, interview, bethesda, space games, starfield direct

Id: DPj1_rLRooU

Length: 55min 12sec (3312 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 22 2023