New details regarding Starfield’s quests have been revealed

In a new episode of Bethesda’s Constellation Questions, which is a Q&A series from the Starfield team, Lead Quest Designer Will Shen shared some details about the mechanics of random encounters, faction quests, and companions in Bethesda’s upcoming title.

The details:

• Responding to a comment asking how random encounters have been expanded upon compared to previous open-world Bethesda games, Shen revealed that Starfield players will find quests almost anywhere across the game’s multiple planets. "Now, you could say you're going to an outpost, and you actually discover there's a whole group of people there with a specific problem. Whereas before [in other Bethesda games], it might have just been a person coming up to you along the road — now it's an actual whole location that can be put there," Shen said in the episode. "And maybe there, they have a problem like, 'One of our members was kidnapped. They've been kidnapped by some pirates. We think they're over there.' [Players] actually are placed in a whole other location with that person in it and enemies around it.”
• Shen also confirmed that the solar system, dubbed the "Old Neighborhood" in the game's lore, will play a part early on in the main story. Players will be sent there to solve the mysteries of specific artifacts, learn what happened to Earth, and visit "Cydonia" — a city on Mars founded by former inhabitants of Earth.
• The faction quests in Starfield will be more "personal" than in other Bethesda RPGs, with players being able to influence the goals and politics of groups they belong to. The faction questlines will be self-contained enough that players will be able to experience them all in a single playthrough without necessarily become the leader of each group they join, similar to how these quests work in Skyrim.
• When asked about companion roles, Shen said that companions will form their own opinions on how the player reacts during the main questline. Throughout the game, the player can also ask their companion to speak on their behalf in some of the encounters that arise. The consequences of this can either be positive or negative, depending on the companion and the scenario they’re put in.
• Finally, Shen talked about how NPCs can react differently after a quest has been completed, depending on its outcome. He claims that the player could be “determining fates — sometimes whether someone lives or dies, or whether someone’s still in [a] faction.”

What do we know about Starfield so far?

• Originally slated for release on November 11, 2022, Starfield has been delayed to the "first half" of 2023. It will be available at launch on Xbox Game Pass after Microsoft’s acquisition of parent company ZeniMax last year.
• The game features many of the characteristics found in Bethesda’s hugely popular Fallout and Elder Scrolls series, including character creation, a perk system, customization, and crafting. It’s even built on Creation Engine 2, a much-needed upgrade to the original Creation Engine that powered Skyrim, Fallout 4, and Fallout 76.
• The game, set in space, will have an open world with over 1,000 explorable planets spread across 100 systems. Outside of the main campaigns, a significant portion of the game's areas will be procedurally generated, which is to be expected from a game of this size.