starfield‘s anticipation continues to increase as the release approaches in early 2023. The first new IP for Bethesda Game Studios in 25 years, starfield represents director and executive producer Todd Howard’s vision built over at least a decade. Howard and his team have created a world that appears to have evolved naturally from real life, themed around understanding what’s out there in space and humanity’s role among the stars.
Howard wants players to create their own immersion and embrace traditional RPG elements rather than forcing them into limited stories. Set in 2310, the Settled Systems are light-years from Earth with hundreds of galaxies and over 1,000 planets, where players will encounter various factions, mercenaries, pirates, explorers, and corporations with their own agendas. While these ideologies beg to be explored, starfield should be thought out to avoid imitating some aspects, especially in the companies, of The outer worlds.
Companies in the outside world
The outer worlds from Obsidian Entertainment is a successful RPG in its own right, also set hundreds of years in the future when humanity has colonized the stars. While The outer worlds is a smaller scale game compared to starfield, there are overlapping elements. The game’s setting is the Halcyon System, a place proudly advertised as wholly owned by companies.
The Halcyon Holdings Corporate Board, or simply the Board – ten CEOs of the system’s founding companies – control governance, laws and religion throughout Halcyon. As the game progresses, it becomes increasingly clear that The Board only cares about winnings. Food shortages, disease, corporate conspiracies, mutated wildlife, and blissful ignorance exist beneath the system’s gleaming facade, as The Board makes its settlers believe that breaks, time off, and weekend procrastination are detrimental to success and morale.
In short, The outer worlds proposes that companies control every factor within the colony and view their settlers as fodder to keep machines running. With only the capital Byzantium deemed worth saving, the administration devises ways to reward unsuspecting settlers with peaceful early retirement – brutally butchered by auto mechanics. Presented through satirical humor, companies in The outer worlds are the money-grabbing villains who oppress society.
Starfield Companies
While companies will play a role in starfield, with several dozen mentioned or viewed on character creation screens, their overall position has yet to be determined. Since Howard has ensured that the game is based on realism and takes an evolutionary approach to how current systems will evolve in the future, their roles should get some exposure. For example, fans noticed in character backgrounds that players can start the game with a starter house and mortgage owned by GalBank.
The presence of interstellar banks indicates that some institutions may be fundamental pillars in the Settled Systems governed by some aspect of the law. Through character creation and background menus, various companies seem to deal primarily with manufactured equipment, starships, defense systems, and other aspects of space survival. Players have noticed entities such as Argos Extractors, Axion Energy TEC, KFactor, Lunar Robotics, Ryujin Industries, and Tranquilitea.
This puts starfield in an excellent place to avoid similarities with The outer worlds. By keeping the majority of companies rooted in manufacturing and engineering, starfield can ignore the idea that they are monopolies or major conglomerates that control every area of life. That’s not to say some can’t be influential or representative of corporate greed, but limiting their oversight helps set this game world apart. Instead, a lot of Starfield’s governance seems to be dictated by factions.
Factions in Starfield
Rather than using corporations to control the Settled Systems, Howard and his team detailed how numerous factions shape the explorable worlds. The player’s character starts out as a member of Constellation, a group whose goal is to explore the galaxy. Whether players remain in Constellation or join other factions, they will encounter the two opposing factions at the heart of the Settled Systems: the United Colonies and the Freestar Collective.
Existing in a Cold War state, these factions will pull at the player. Using classic RPG elements and player agency, choices and their consequences arising from these groups will continue to open up the universe. However, Howard has also claimed that players can join other factions to suit their playstyle. This will lead to different endings that emphasize the player’s choice. Some of these factions have been mentioned, but many more may arise:
- Zodiac sign
- United Colonies
- Freestar Collective
- Crimson Fleet
- Ryujin Industries
- SysDef
- Xenofresh Corporation
With some companies like GalBank, Ryujin Industries and Xenofresh Corporation being presented as factions themselves, players can expect the influence of business to leave a mark on different worlds. However, these companies and factions seem to have competition among themselves, if not all-out warfare; who successfully avoids parallels with The outer worlds. While Outer World companies competed, their cohesion as The Board shaped the rule of law.
starfield is looking for a complex and densely populated experience with player choices to explore. The gaming world has shown that companies will be an ever-present factor in the future, similar to their presence today. Although there are similarities between starfield and The outer worlds, Starfield’s current trajectory with manufactured, competing entities and factions avoids the same set-up in which corporations as a single entity, The Board, control every aspect of life.
starfield Coming to PC and Xbox Series X/S in 2023.
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