Starfield gameplay premiere resembles “No Man’s Skyrim,” leads Xbox showcase
Microsoft's bow in the annual flurry of early June game announcements, streamed on YouTube on Sunday, came with a surprising asterisk: a focus on "games you can play over the next 12 months." But while the company had a lot to announce for Xbox Game Pass subscribers in 2022, the biggest Xbox console exclusives shown on Sunday appear to skip 2022 altogether.
Bethesda Game Studios tempered fans' expectations last month by confirming that both of its biggest previously announced "Xbox console exclusive" games, Starfield and Redfall, had been delayed to 2023—now we know both should arrive by June next year. After reviewing Starfield's Sunday gameplay reveal, we wonder whether that time window will be sufficient for Bethesda to finish the game because Starfield looks massive.
At the end of his presentation, Bethesda veteran Todd Howard gestured to a map of one of Starfield's major star systems, Alpha Centauri, which appears to include four "major" planets around its sun and an additional eight or nine moon-like celestial bodies. Then the "galaxy map" zoomed out to reveal six named solar systems, along with dots for an additional dozen, and Howard said the full game map includes "over 1,000 planets for you to explore."
That's shy of the 18 quintillion planets you'll find in the 2016 space exploration game No Man's Sky, and Howard clarifies that many of Starfield's planets will be "barren" sources of crucial resources. Thus, we're left wondering exactly how many of these planets will be designed with the cities, fortresses, settlements, and quests hinted at in this trailer; Bethesda didn't offer a size estimate compared to its other major RPG launches (ie "50 percent more dialogue than Skyrim").
Still, thanks to Sunday's 15-minute presentation, we can finally imagine how Starfield will play. The trailer's most promising content revolves around players' ability to both build and operate their own spaceships. A detailed ship-building interface allows players to bolt ship components together, and each portion impacts variables like cargo storage space, hull and shield integrity, number of supported crew members, combat proficiency, and "gravity jump range," as measured in light-years. This interface includes requirements to balance engine power and "reactor" energy demands, while Howard hints to crew enlistment being a key factor to managing your long-distance voyages.
With a spaceship built, players can not only blast off into space but also contend with interstellar combat. Bethesda Game Studios has never shipped a game with dogfight support, so we'll be curious to play this mode and see how flexible it is on a maneuverability and weapon-targeting basis, but at first blush, Starfield's spaceship combat sure looks cool.
We're less excited about ground combat in Starfield thus far, however. It appears to revolve around basic military weaponry (pistols, assault rifles, grenades) as opposed to the technology we would expect in a 24th-century universe that has mastered things like "gravity warp drives." Yet other interface teases, including a combat-focused skill tree and a weapon-crafting interface, suggest that later-game Starfield weapons could be boosted with upgrades like massive magazines and "ballistic laser" elements. We do appreciate that the skill tree system offers additional rewards when players repeatedly use an ability they've unlocked, thus "ranking" those abilities higher to get increased damage and other perks.
Sadly, Bethesda's demo didn't include a VATS-like system that might emphasize loadout-specific tactics or give non-combat character archetypes a fighting chance. A peek at the game's character-creation system confirms character types like "diplomat" and "chef," who will arguably battle quite differently than "bounty hunter" and "ronin." These "backgrounds" will be combined with selectable "traits" that might give players town-specific perks or special traversal abilities. Hilariously, Bethesda revealed one trait that makes players stronger... so long as they continuously hop when they walk across planetary surfaces. It describes your character's need to jump as "an addiction."
On a story basis, it sounds like your Starfield character figures into the plot by being the first human to discover an "artifact," which "appears to be one of many," a quest giver suggests. This quest begins on the apparently major hub world of Constellation, and from there, you'll build up both your personal abilities and an increasingly powerful spaceship to traverse the galaxy in search of additional artifacts—while contending with warring cross-galaxy factions who have different ideas on what to do with these artifacts. That says nothing of the "visions" artifacts apparently produced for people who find them, which will likely figure into the plot.
While some of the worlds are dotted with fantastical beasts and massive, detailed cities, Bethesda Game Studios seems content to keep its chatty characters in a more dated realm of plasticky, dead-eyed animations. But, hey—if the story and dialogue are up to Bethesda's usual standards, we can forgive faces that look like they're at least two console generations behind.
Bethesda's other major gameplay premiere came from Arkane Austin's Redfall, which appears to combine the co-op undead-slaying action of Left 4 Dead with RPG-styled loadout development. This year's new trailer focuses largely on gruesomely detailed combat, full of vampires who explode in handsome bursts of fiery particle effects. As a "2023" game that will skip the base Xbox One generation, it sure looks the part of a "current-gen" stunner. But we didn't learn much about how the game's cast of characters will differ from one another on a mechanical basis.
Based on a follow-up FAQ sent by Bethesda to members of the press, we have gotten a hint of the tactical perks exclusive to each of the game's four characters: unique weapons and grenades; telekinesis and shields; a "spectral raven" who can look into the distance and grant its owner invisibility; and a handy robot sidekick who offers engineering-styled perks. But we're left with more questions than answers about how mission progression will work, how players will access character-specific upgrades over time, and how the "solo" mode will work in a game that appears to revolve around cooperative play.
Arguably the biggest "Xbox Game Studios" reveal of the day came from Forza Motorsport, now slated to launch sometime in "spring 2023." This Turn 10 creation will be exclusive to Xbox Series X/S and Windows PCs, and it will focus extensively on ray-traced reflections and lighting effects, along with day/night driving cycles, weather effects, and a more detailed car-deformation damage modeling system than we've ever seen in the genre. The above gallery's images were apparently rendered on real Xbox Series X hardware, and what we've seen thus far has us optimistic about next year's Forza facing off against this year's Gran Turismo 7 for the modern sim-racing crown.
Microsoft's eagerness to expand its popular Minecraft universe will continue sometime in 2023 with Minecraft Legends. This action-RTS game will have players control a single, blocky avatar who runs around a battlefield issuing commands, building structures, and giving orders to troops before sending them to battle against a scourge of "Piglin" monsters. While the trailer didn't show apparent gameplay, Microsoft provided the above sample images to the press, which suggests that players will stay locked to their "captain" avatar instead of floating above the battlefield and using a mouse to issue commands.
Bizarrely, the first-party forces at Microsoft only have one new Xbox Game Studios title confirmed for launch by the end of 2022. Pentiment, developed by Obsidian Entertainment, sees players take command of a wayward Bavarian artist who must question his fellow townspeople to solve a series of murders. The game is rendered in a 2D, pre-Renaissance style that forgoes perspective in favor of flat, thick-outlined drawings, and it looks so much like an indie game that its eventual mention of Obsidian had us drop our jaws a bit. But, hey: we'll take whatever utterly unique experiments Microsoft wants to pack into its massive Game Pass portfolio.
Third-party content reveals—which, for now, includes Blizzard
The rest of the presentation brought out massive third-party guns to make a case for Xbox as a compelling platform, with the biggest arguably coming from an Xbox Game Pass promotion with Riot Games. Starting "this winter," all five of Riot's "game as a service" offerings will include content giveaways for Game Pass subscribers. This means full character roster unlocks in both official League of Legends MOBA games and the competitive shooter Valorant, along with a substantial content unlock in the digital card game Legends of Runeterra and significant content in Teamfight Tactics. (These games also sell cosmetic tweaks as a la carte microtransactions, which Game Pass subscribers will not get as part of their subscriptions.)
The event's "playable in the next 12 months" pledge had one exception: confirmation that Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima's next video game would be a co-production between Kojima Productions and Xbox Game Studios. (So much for that guess we previously made about Kojima Productions and Sony.) Kojima did not use the opportunity to confirm a game name, gameplay details, or release date estimate, with the game maker simply confirming that it will lean heavily upon Xbox's cloud infrastructure. Speaking of Japan: Japanese RPG fans can look forward to a slew of classic Persona games coming to Game Pass. Persona 5 Royale will launch by the end of 2022, while Persona 4 Golden and Persona 3 Portable will get Xbox ports sometime in 2023.
And while Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard hasn't yet concluded, that relationship figured into Sunday's Xbox showcase, as Blizzard used it to premiere two major announcements. First, Overwatch 2's beta will begin on October 4, 2022, and the game will launch in a free-to-play state. Second, Diablo IV will launch sometime before June 2023, and it will support cross-platform and cross-progression between Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, and Windows PCs, along with couch co-op.
The Diablo IV presentation included a reveal of its fifth playable class, the Necromancer, and it confirmed that the game will eschew a linear campaign in favor of open-world exploration of a massive, dungeon- and town-filled landscape. Players can progress through both the default campaign and endgame "Paragon" paths however players see fit.
A few more notable announcements:
The long-awaited 2D adventuring sequel, Hollow Knight: Silksong, finally has a release window... of sometime before June 2023. While the game could arrive sooner than that, nobody has thus far clarified its launch window any further.
Squanch Games, helmed by Rick and Morty creator Justin Roiland, announced an October 2022 launch window for a bizarre new first-person shooter called High on Life. This game will include weapons with faces that talk to players as they walk around, and this reminds us of the similarly wacky arsenal found in 2005's Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath.
Team Ninja's next game is called Wo Long: Fallen Destiny, and it's slated to launch in "early 2023." Its flashy premiere video made it difficult to discern whether this will resemble the studio's prior action-adventure games Ninja Gaiden or Nioh.
Oxide Games, the makers of Ashes of the Singularity, are launching a new timeline-mashing RTS called Ara: History Untold sometime in 2023.
Cocoon was announced as a follow-up from Jeppe Carlson, the "lead gameplay designer" of creepy indie hits Limbo and Inside. This top-down world-warping adventure looks decidedly different than those stylized "2.5-D" hits made by the studio Playdead, so we'll be curious whether Carlson can strike game-design gold at a different studio with a different style of game.
While the 95-minute presentation confirms that Xbox Game Pass will continue to push a ton of content for paying subscribers, it leaves many of Xbox Game Studios' properties unmentioned, particularly the dormant Gears of War series and anything bubbling up at the fun factory that is Double Fine Productions. Microsoft representatives did not respond to questions asking whether the above image confirms that Xbox Game Studios has no further new-game reveals for the rest of 2022, or if the company has more in store in the coming months.
The rest of Sunday's presentation, which includes updates to games-as-a-service fare like Elder Scrolls Online, Fallout 76, and Sea of Thieves, along with further third-party reveals for 2022 and 2023, can be found below.
