Starfield - Concept Art

PC Gamer shows some concept art for Starfield.

Bethesda hosted a Skyrim 10th Anniversary Concert today, but it also looked forward to its next big RPG: Starfield. At the end of the broadcast, Todd Howard introduced composer Inon Zur, who has provided scores for the likes of Fallout 76, Outriders, Dragon's Dogma and Dragon Age II. What followed was a performance of the 'Starfield Suite' by the London Symphony Orchestra.

It's definitely worth checking out--you can watch it at 51:39 above--but arguably more exciting is the appearance of more than a dozen new pieces of Starfield concept art. I've collected them below, but since they're lightly animated, it's probably worth watching the video, too.







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More information.

I'm ready for some actual screenshots at this point. That said, there's some good stuff there.



https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/gPH7ar8s5gcAdJZp7bVwJ3.jpg



https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/AeSuX2AcUFiNN2QzxUoWm3.jpg

gameplay is all i care for and the rererelease of skyrim is a just a bad joke on rpg fans...

Hmm... nothing impressive, really. The concept arts are nice, but they're just that: conept arts - it tells us nothing of the game. Also, since the release date was set for 11/11/22, just a year ahead, I expected some actual screeshots to come with the announcement.

Well, I think concept art isn't to impress, but to show the tone of the game.
I like it, especially the city

Yeah, I don't think the art is that good in itself, but if it's representative of the sort of thing we'll see in-game, I'm definitely keen.

Morrandir said:

Well, I think concept art isn't to impress, but to show the tone of the game.
I like it, especially the city

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Yeah, I get a "5th Element" vibe.

Those arts do tell something about the game.

I agree - it is something to look at while there will be not only Bethesda, but any other openworld RPG for a whole year - correct me if I'm wrong. There is Elex II, but I'm not sure what will be changed in their II sequel and that is all I know about. There was Sony with their stories and Ubisoft with their more and more action/microtransaction/collection oriented games and that is. I don't play souls like games, so that is left out for me. So I have to play MMOs. It is almost scary that Starfield is the only RPG. I mean people had objections to Skyrim, but the problem is any other RPGs after Skyrim were even worse RPGs or not? Majority of them are action games with fetch quests. Or long stories - Witcher was action with a story for me, not really RPG, well it was role of witcher only.
So here we are, no matter what Bethesda does, they are still the best in openworlds and "play your own story" games. But still Starfield can turn out to be like Fallout 4.

Sigh. The Game we might never play.

Sigh, that auto bethesda response....

It does look to be good ole hard sci-fi with vac suits, alien worlds, spacecraft, and blasters. Hopefully it's not just some procedural generation game.

Dafela said:

I mean people had objections to Skyrim, but the problem is any other RPGs after Skyrim were even worse RPGs or not?

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Something tells me you've missed a lot of RPGs over the last 10 years.

JDR13 said:

Something tells me you've missed a lot of RPGs over the last 10 years.

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Which one?

Dafela said:

Which one?

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Well, since you seem to want RPGs that don't fall into the action category...

Pillars of Eternity 1 & 2, Divinity: Original Sin 1 & 2, Wasteland 2 & 3, Underrail, The Age of Decadence, Pathfinder: Kingmaker.

That's just off the top of my head.

JDR13 said:

Well, since you seem to want RPGs that don't fall into the action category…

Pillars of Eternity 1 & 2, Divinity: Original Sin 1 & 2, Wasteland 2 & 3, Underrail, The Age of Decadence, Pathfinder: Kingmaker.

That's just off the top of my head.

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I agree that those are better RPGs, but what is very frustrating for me is that nobody does that in 3d openworld and Skyrim became the only one which is atleast close to that.
I know that it was always Bethesda territory, but over the years I would expect someone would atleast try, but the latest one was DAI and that was just Bioware version of open world - no mechanics at all, just combat and story and Ubisoft collectibles. Then Witcher 3 was released then all the other claimed to be followers of Bioware or Witcher 3 - action game with a better story with cutscenes and some limited RPG mechanics supporting the given role of your character - like AC, Rockstars games or some AA like Greedfall. Then Sony took their own way with pure story based action games for consoles - you can say that about Days gone aswell. Only Piranha bytes do the same they did always with factions.
When any other AA or small studio tried to re-create Skyrim for some reason they met huge optiomalization problems and unability to fill their big world with something meaningfull in some reasonable time, even though Bethesda was able to do that with a small team of people, because they are very effecient, which is something some players don't want to see.
Then Dragon Dogma atleast tried to brind a group into 3d openworld and it was successfull, but again - who does atleast that?

Then Cyberpunk was released it was worse Witcher 3 - no possibility to carve your own story in their openworld.

I have heard about Hitman and Deus Ex being really good, also some other Eastern RPGs (Yakuza), but I know nothing about it, but I will try to do the blasphemy and describe how Witcher 3 would look like if it would use formula of Skyrim RPG.

Dafela said:

I agree that those are better RPGs, but what is very frustrating for me is that nobody does that in 3d openworld and Skyrim became the only one which is atleast close to that.
I know that it was always Bethesda territory, but over the years I would expect someone would atleast try, but the latest one was DAI and that was just Bioware version of open world - no mechanics at all, just combat and story and Ubisoft collectibles. Then Witcher 3 was released then all the other claimed to be followers of Bioware or Witcher 3 - action game with a better story with cutscenes and some limited RPG mechanics supporting the given role of your character - like AC, Rockstars games or some AA like Greedfall. Then Sony took their own way with pure story based action games for consoles - you can say that about Days gone aswell. Only Piranha bytes do the same they did always with factions.
When any other AA or small studio tried to re-create Skyrim for some reason they met huge optiomalization problems and unability to fill their big world with something meaningfull in some reasonable time, even though Bethesda was able to do that with a small team of people, because they are very effecient, which is something some players don't want to see.
Then Dragon Dogma atleast tried to brind a group into 3d openworld and it was successfull, but again - who does atleast that?

Then Cyberpunk was released it was worse Witcher 3 - no possibility to carve your own story in their openworld.

I have heard about Hitman and Deus Ex being really good, also some other Eastern RPGs, but I know nothing about it, but I will try to do the blasphemy and describe how Witcher 3 would look like if it would use formula of Skyrim RPG.

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Have you tried Kingdom Come Deliverance?

Dafela said:

I agree that those are better RPGs, but what is very frustrating for me is that nobody does that in 3d openworld and Skyrim became the only one which is atleast close to that.
I know that it was always Bethesda territory, but over the years I would expect someone would atleast try, but the latest one was DAI and that was just Bioware version of open world - no mechanics at all, just combat and story and Ubisoft collectibles. Then Witcher 3 was released then all the other claimed to be followers of Bioware or Witcher 3 - action game with a better story with cutscenes and some limited RPG mechanics supporting the given role of your character - like AC, Rockstars games or some AA like Greedfall. Then Sony took their own way with pure story based action games for consoles - you can say that about Days gone aswell. Only Piranha bytes do the same they did always with factions.
When any other AA or small studio tried to re-create Skyrim for some reason they met huge optiomalization problems and unability to fill their big world with something meaningfull in some reasonable time, even though Bethesda was able to do that with a small team of people, because they are very effecient, which is something some players don't want to see.
Then Dragon Dogma atleast tried to brind a group into 3d openworld and it was successfull, but again - who does atleast that?

Then Cyberpunk was released it was worse Witcher 3 - no possibility to carve your own story in their openworld.

I have heard about Hitman and Deus Ex being really good, also some other Eastern RPGs (Yakuza), but I know nothing about it, but I will try to do the blasphemy and describe how Witcher 3 would look like if it would use formula of Skyrim RPG.

Click to expand...

You have to see what is more important for you, the open-world feature or the story. Any of those features is costly, so it seems we don't see many games with a big open-world, good story, and complete character choice. Also, terms like open-world or even RPG are not defined and vary widely in interpretation.

The D:OS games, especially D:OS2, are probably the closest I can think of, and BG3 if you don't mind Early Access or waiting for a long time. The remakes of Gothic and System Shock are good candidates too, but they're not new games.

Hitman is not what I call open-world and the character can change even less than The Witcher 3, so you can forget about it in that context. Same for Deus Ex, you're stick with a guy and his personality too. Same for Watch Dogs, which even lacks a proper story.

Skyrim and Fallout 3 were far from excellent from a quest and story points of view, but they had a big open world (I still had a lot of fun with it, despite those shortcomings). So for my part, I'd rather have a good story and interesting quests than that, even at the expense of an open-world.

I think open-world is overrated. It attracted many gamers as 3D games did when they were first released, because it was the next big achievement, but it has a cost.

EDIT:
I wrote this without reading the last replies, so it may not be in the right order, but I will read it all later It is an interesting discussion for me

Skyrim system seems to me as close as to RP you could get atm in openworld.

So how the world of Witcher 3 would look like?
First the roles - I would like to play a role of dwarven thief from Novigrad - I would need a set of similars skills like from AC, houses which I would be able to rob, some justice system, daily for that in thieves lair, ranking system and NPCs reacting to my ranking up position. And thieves guild main quest.
So - that is thieves guild from Skyrim

Then I would like to play a mage from the place Yeneffer came from - I would need something similar and spellcrafting, which is similar to Oblivion.

Another role from Gerald companions would be bard - again the same as previous.

Then there would be a role of some kind of crafter, farmer or merchant, which wouldn't be interesting to play on its own in this setting, but it would serve well as a casual background - again that was in Skyrim aswell.

Then you would have to cut off from the game every only witcher like main quest and side quests, because there was too much of resources spent, you couldn't afford that in multi-roles game and get it in the same line as other roles. And add more generic main quest, ideally tied to places rather than your own character.
Then there is personality system with social skills. I will not go too much into that, because that could be long, lets say, that Skyrim had just a bit, Bioware games had that as the only RP present, and those cRPG games have that as their main focus together with strategic combat.
All of it is well known, still every time AA or small studio tries to do RPG openworld they end up running out of resources, because they aim for fully voiced cutscenes like from movies, which still will not let you play your own story - why nobody does that?
Is Unity so bad for optimalization or why it seem like impossible task for small studios?

Dafela said:

I agree - it is something to look at while there will be not only Bethesda, but any other openworld RPG for a whole year - correct me if I'm wrong. There is Elex II, but I'm not sure what will be changed in their II sequel and that is all I know about. There was Sony with their stories and Ubisoft with their more and more action/microtransaction/collection oriented games and that is. I don't play souls like games, so that is left out for me. So I have to play MMOs. It is almost scary that Starfield is the only RPG. I mean people had objections to Skyrim, but the problem is any other RPGs after Skyrim were even worse RPGs or not? Majority of them are action games with fetch quests. Or long stories - Witcher was action with a story for me, not really RPG, well it was role of witcher only.
So here we are, no matter what Bethesda does, they are still the best in openworlds and "play your own story" games. But still Starfield can turn out to be like Fallout 4.

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Have you heard of Book of Travels? The devs claim it as tiny MMO which you can play solo or with max of 7 players per server.

I refunded it for now due to unstable server connection but I'm keen to give it another gone once things settle a bit.

I can tell there are talented artists working on Starfield, which makes me anticipate the game even more. I also want to see real gameplay, but concept art isn't any less valuable when it comes to communicating the setting, the atmosphere and the tone that the game aims to have, and I like a lot what I'm seeing.

Whether they achieve that aim or not, that remains to be seen.