Starfield Features Complex Romantic Relationships, Says Howard

Starfield fans have been a bit starved for news lately. Thankfully, Bethesda Game Studios’ Todd Howard was just featured in a lengthy appearance on Lex Fridman’s videocast.

As usual, Howard talked at length about a variety of subjects and games, including Starfield itself. One of the main new tidbits revealed by the designer is the focus on more complex romantic relationships compared to previous games from BGS. These will be featured in four of the available player companions.

One of the things that we actually have pushed in Starfield – so we have a number of companions, but four them, we go, I won’t say super complex romantic, but more complex relationships than we’ve had in terms of not just whether they like you or they don’t like you. They can be in love with you and dislike something you did and be pissed at you temporarily and then come back to loving you. In a lot of games, you just work your way up, they like you more and more and more and more, and now you’re in a relationship. When you make him upset, you drift out of it like it never happened, whereas we wanted one where okay, we can be in a relationship and we’ve committed to each other in some way, but I just did something that really made you angry. As opposed to just drifting out of that status, you’re in a temporary ‘I don’t like what you did’ state.

This evidently ties into the enhanced dialogue/persuasion system that was previously discussed by Todd Howard. The renowned game designer said plenty more about Starfield in the videocast, confirming that different spacesuits provide various buffs to toxicity and/or temperature resistance which will be crucial while exploring planets with extreme weather conditions. He also revealed that star systems will have levels and, therefore, a certain amount of difficulty attached to them.

Starfield was delayed to the first half of 2023 alongside Arkane’s Redfall. On that topic, Howard stated the team wanted to say they could get the game done in time for the original 11/11/22 release date (exactly eleven years after the launch of Skyrim), but there was too much risk involved to the team, to Xbox, and ultimately to the fans as well.

An updated release date hasn’t been nailed down yet, but we’ll let you know once it does. Meanwhile, check out our roundup page with a collection of every scrap of information we could find on Starfield.