Starfield may have ended up as another debacle similar to that of Cyberpunk 2077, according to Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier. He had spoken to some people connected to the game before last year’s E3, and came away with these impressions.
Jason had heard that the development team was extremely worried about committing to a November 11th release date based on the progress they had made thus far. The term “Next Cyberpunk” was floating around the office, and morale was likely low as a result.
Last spring before E3, I spoke to some folks on Starfield who were extremely worried about committing to a 11-11-22 date based on the progress they’d made so far. (“Next Cyberpunk” was the term floated.) Good on Bethesda for delaying even after announcing that specific date. https://t.co/QdWFf0zGIY
— Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier) May 12, 2022
Jason further stated that it was good on Bethesda for delaying Starfield, even after already announcing the specific release date of November 11th, 2022. Now that the game has been delayed to mid 2023, the studio will have time to hopefully release it in a polished state. Fans are eager to see the game in action, and they probably won’t have to wait much longer, as the Xbox and Bethesda Showcase event is right around the corner.
Starfield is Bethesda Game Studios’ first new intellectual property (IP) in 25 years, and director Todd Howard describes it as “Skyrim in space.” According to Howard, the company had been dabbling in space-themed games since 1994: they had obtained the rights to produce a game based on the Traveller role-playing system, but quickly lost them; their Delta V game, released in 1994, was part of this Traveller licence but had not been completely fulfilled. The atmosphere of Starfield was drawn from their aborted space combat game The 10th Planet, which was set to be released in October 1997. Howard noted that they possessed Star Trek rights in the 2000s, and he offered a concept for a role-playing game set in that universe, but it was not pursued.
While Bethesda had long desired to make a science fiction game and had strong ideas for its gameplay style, it required some time to solidify the concepts behind what Starfield would be about in order to set it apart from other science fiction games that had already been released. They settled on a subject that main artist Istvan Pely coined “NASA punk,” in which the technology, albeit situated in the future, can be linked back to NASA space missions.
