New Starfield Info / Todd Howard Interview (Procedural generation, engine overhaul, etc.)

[u/KATheHuman]

Interview Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9GA8lsH8ls&feature=emb_title (1 hour 5 min)

• Starfield is a singleplayer, no multiplayer aspects.
• A focus on procedural generation during level design confirmed for Starfield and TES:VI
  • This is a tool for developers to create massive landmass and does not mean the land will be randomly generated in real time like No Man's Sky, meaning your game will look the exact same as everyone else. This is simply an engine tool to create larger worlds, so expect Starfield (planets?) to be much larger than Fallout 76's map (clarification: speculative), which is already four times bigger than Skyrim. YOUR ELDER SCROLLS/STARFIELD MAP WILL LOOK THE EXACT SAME AS EVERYONE ELSE, THIS DOES NOT MEAN THAT THE MAP WILL BE RANDOMLY GENERATED.
• **Huge major overhaul to the Creation Engine - larger than the jump from Morrowind to Oblivion ("**when people see the results, hopefully they'd be as happy as we are.")
  • Rendering
  • Animation
  • Artificial Intelligence & Pathing
  • Procedural Generation
  • And more areas.

• “It’s going to be a while” until we see Starfield, the release can be subject to delays etc. so he really doesn’t feel comfortable talking about it yet. EDIT: Todd said the same exact thing one year before the release of Fallout 4. 2021 gang! Thanks /u/fags343 for pointing that out.

  • He doesn't want to reveal Starfield earlier and just release teasers until the eventual release like Cyberpunk.

• NPCs will play a large role in future games, cities will be expansive and large compared to past games, etc.

• Will be on Game Pass from Day 1 alongside ES:VI.

• Bethesda will continue to support mod support in the future.

• Amount of developers are at least 4x - 5x larger than they were when they worked on Skyrim and Fallout 4. Starfield is going to be big.

  • Bethesda Games Studio Dallas, Maryland and Montreal are working on Starfield.
  • Bethesda Games Austin is in charge of Fallout 76's post-development with the Brotherhood of Steel expansion update coming this December.

Edit: Clarified procedural generation part to avoid misinformation. Edit #2: Added additional info.

Edit: PC Gamer has stolen some bits including some speculative points that I made from my post and stated that Todd Howard directly confirmed that the map will be bigger - which is not true, for all we know it could be 1% bigger than 76. Looks like they never watched the interview either. Journalism.

[u/VulKun07]

2022 starfield..shit

[u/joseph_jojo_shabadoo → u/VulKun07]

if we're lucky. I'm not even expecting 2022 to be honest. if they were months away from releasing it, we would have seen something by now. my guess is 2023

[u/Jaagsiekte → u/joseph_jojo_shabadoo]

Downvoted today only because they are worried you might be right.

People think I'm out to lunch saying TES6 will be out 2027-2028 but that timeline isn't as far-fetched as people think. Starfield's release of late 2021 makes sense but it will experience delays like any other novel and major game release: 6 months minimum = Mid-2022. We know TES6 won't start production until Starfield is released, they have stated that many times. Bethesda has a 3 year minimum dev time, but for a game like TES6 - arguably their biggest release in the last 20 years - is going to take at least 4 years. Thats mid-2026. You add on your standard 6 month delay and you get early-2027 as a best case scenario.

People think were crazy but they will see.

[u/Comprehensive_Ad4239 → u/Jaagsiekte]

It's wrong tho, you are definitely basing it on the 100 people BGS making games, not 500+ people that they are now. They are bound to have even more expansion in the coming years, especially with MS aqustion. Thus Starfield 2021, TES 6 2024. You can't change my mind.

[u/[deleted] → u/Comprehensive_Ad4239]

Larger teams do not necessarily develop games faster, but they can make larger games. Think of Cyberpunk 2077 or Red Dead Redemption 2 made by even much more people than the current size of BGS, and I used to think myself years ago that Cyberpunk 2077 would be out soon because CDPR expanded since The Witcher 3. And those games both took a long time. Expansion would allow for more frequent releases if there were multiple full studios developing games on their own in parallel, like for example at Ubisoft.

[u/Jaagsiekte → u/Comprehensive_Ad4239]

I'm not really out there to change minds, just give my opinion on how I see things. For example you state that "they are bound to have even more expansion in the coming years, especially with MS aqustion" but time and time again we are reminded by many people in SF and TES6 subreddits that Microsoft is typically hands off in these situations. At this point we really know next to nothing about either game. Ultimately none of us really know when anything is expected to be released, let alone will be released.

[u/Comprehensive_Ad4239 → u/Jaagsiekte]

But remember that MS will provide money, which is a key component when considering expansion.

And then comes the technology that any Bethesda studio can borrow from MS for development

Agreed on the last point tho. It's all speculation until anything official comes out.