While the general player response to Starfield has been quite divided, with many criticizing the title for not feeling as immersive as Bethesda’s other RPG franchises – The Elder Scrolls and Fallout – director Todd Howard has noted that even those two franchises were divisive in their early days. In an interview with GamesRadar, Howard spoke about how games tend to find loyal fan bases as time goes on.
“If you look back at the beginning of Elder Scrolls, beginning of Fallout, they’re a little bit the same,” said Howard. “And then, you find an audience that loves that. So, I think it’s true that Fallout 76 and Starfield clearly – they’re creatively different than what we had done [before].”
“And we really wanted to do that. When you’re doing a certain type of thing for, in my case, 20 years, we want to try some other things and learn from that. We have ideas that we want to get out there.”
Ultimately, Howard said that he is glad that Fallout and The Elder Scrolls managed to garner massive audiences, which in turn has allowed Bethesda to take more creative risks with its other projects, like Fallout 76, and most recently, Starfield. He said, “We’re fortunate those games have found, in the scheme of things, giant audiences that let us keep doing things in them.”
Referring to Fallout 76 and Starfield, Howard said, “even though they’re a bit off the core path of the single-player games that we have been doing, we’re just fortunate to have the success that we’ve had with them.”
When it comes to Fallout, it is worth noting that Bethesda only bought up the franchise back in 2004. Before this, the franchise was developed by Interplay Entertainment. Bethesda’s work on the series started with Fallout 3, which came out on PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 in 2008. At the time, it offered a massive shift away from what the series was known for, switching from turn-based combat with an isometric view to a first-person RPG with shooter-adjacent gameplay. At this point, however, Bethesda has been in charge of the Fallout IP for longer than Interplay ever was.
Recently, Howard also revealed some details about the unique Unity ending of Starfield, and how it leads directly into New Game+ mode. Originally, players who picked the ending would get thrown into a new universe with all of their power and progression, but without any of their gear or items. With the Free Lanes update, players now have the chance to create an item that allows them to take up to 50 items along with them in their New Game+ run after the Unity ending.
“The Unity was our way of doing New Game+,” Howard explained. “It was us asking you this weird, deep question that I actually think got lost on a lot of people. It asks if you are just this power gamer who wants to get everything, or are you willing to leave this world behind? How do you feel about your own life choices – would you leave that all behind and start over? Some of that pain – having to give up all of your stuff, Sarah Morgan not loving you anymore, and so on – is supposed to make you feel all of that.”
Starfield is available on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S. For more details, check out our review of its recent PS5 release. In the meantime, Bethesda is also working on The Elder Scrolls 6.
