Starfield features a number of factions that players will get to interact with and influence, but they won’t necessarily find themselves in charge of these organizations. In a new Constellation Questions video, lead quest designer Will Shen spoke about Bethesda’s approach to populating the universe of Starfield with these groups and how players will be able to interact with all of the factions independently of each other.
“One of the early things we decided on was making sure that the main quest actually kind of gives you a little bit of a tour of the settled systems and all of the major players there, so that we can give you a taste of what they’re going to be up to,” Shen explained. “We decided we really want to make sure that you can play through all the faction lines independently of each other. And this time around, we really want the stories to be a little more personal.”
One example of this approach that Shen mentioned was the Freestar Rangers, an organization of peacekeepers who can be influenced to uphold the ideals of justice over the demands of industry. The decisions that players make will have far-reaching consequences for these factions, while your companions will have “a lot of opinions and points of view about what decisions you’ll be making” in the main storyline.
Other factions operating in Starfield that have been revealed so far include the United Colonies, Crimson Fleet, Freestar Collective, and Ryujin Industries, with each group having a clash of opinions on the future of humanity. While some of these philosophies are naturally at odds, you’ll still be able to experience each group’s viewpoint and possibly direct them to take a better path forward.
Starfield doesn’t have a concrete release date yet but it is expected to launch in the first half of 2023 on PC and Xbox Series X|S, and will be available on Game Pass. It’ll be one of Microsoft’s first exclusive games to be priced at $70, and for more details, you can check out GameSpot’s feature on everything that we know about Starfield.
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