Starfield was the star of the Xbox & Bethesda Game Showcase 2022, with nearly 15 minutes of gameplay dedicated to the sci-fi open world RPG right at the end of the event. There were also instances where the developers showed bits of conversation with NPCs, but the player character did not seem to speak at all.
The following day, the official Starfield account on Twitter confirmed what some had guessed: the game will go back to the Bethesda tradition of a silent protagonist, which had been broken with Fallout 4.
Yes, dialogue in @StarfieldGame is first person and your character does not have a voice. pic.twitter.com/A8384m6rGN
— Bethesda Game Studios (@BethesdaStudios) June 13, 2022
As always in these cases, some players were disappointed by the news while most old-school Bethesda fans were happy the studio was returning to their traditions in this regard. After all, Starfield featured the most detailed character creation system yet in a Bethesda Game Studios game, and having a silent protagonist avoids any potential dichotomy between the character's looks and their voice.
There is one bonus tidbit that comes with this knowledge. Eight months ago, Game Director Todd Howard confirmed that Starfield will feature over 150K lines of voiced dialogue. It's a substantial upgrade from the 111K lines of voiced dialogue featured in Fallout 4, and even more so when you consider that this figure includes the player character's 70K lines. As such, it is fair to say that Starfield will have around 3.75x the amount of NPC-voiced lines compared to the last single player RPG made by the studio. This bodes well for fleshing out the promised explorable space of over 100 systems and 1000 planets.
As a reminder, the game was delayed to the first half of 2023 a few weeks ago. It will be available for PC and Xbox Series S|X.
Starfield is the first new universe in 25 years from Bethesda Game Studios, the award-winning creators of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Fallout 4. In this next generation role-playing game set amongst the stars, create any character you want and explore with unparalleled freedom. Harnessing the power of next-gen technology and built on the all-new Creation Engine 2, Starfield takes you on a journey through space as you strive to answer humanity’s greatest mystery.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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