Starfield is releasing exactly eleven years after Skyrim, and with Todd Howard calling the new game “Skyrim in space,” it seems Bethesda is far keener to compare its first IP in over 25 years with The Elder Scrolls than comparing to Fallout. The studio has also described its upcoming title as a more hardcore RPG than some of Bethesda’s recent games, again hinting at a focus on the past rather than some of the studio’s more recent releases.
There’s one mechanic that Starfield seems likely to handle very differently than Skyrim. Here’s why the new sci-fi game is likely to handle one core mechanic in a different way to The Elder Scrolls 5, and how that seemingly small difference could greatly affect Starfield as a whole.
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Starfield's Ship
Not much has been revealed about Starfield even three years after its announcement, but if the trailers so far have made anything abundantly clear, it’s that the player character will have their own ship. Bethesda even released a survey earlier this year that garnered fan attention for a question about ship customization. The introduction of a player ship is likely to have huge implications for Starfield.
In Skyrim, the player can only usually have one humanoid companion with them at a time. While games like Mass Effect and even Fallout 4 kept their cast of companions relatively small and allowed them to have interactions and even relationships with one another, Skyrim’s followers never even had the opportunity to meet. With almost fifty companions in the base game alone, developing every Skyrim follower to the same extent as a Mass Effect squadmate would be almost impossible.
The fact that the player has a ship in Starfield makes the game likely to handle companions in a very different way to Skyrim. While the last Dragonborn travelled with just one main follower at a time, it seems more likely that Starfield’s protagonist will build their own crew that will remain on the ship instead of returning to their home when they aren't following the player. This difference creates plenty of opportunities for interactions between the companions onboard the player’s ship.
The opportunity for relationships to develop between Starfield's companions would be an unwise one to miss. Having a crew of characters who feel like they have independent lives when not out adventuring with the player has a lot of immersion value. However, it also makes it more likely that Starfield will have a smaller group of available companions than a game like Skyrim did.
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Starfield's Companion System
While Skyrim didn’t expect the player to interact with many of its potential companion characters at all, Starfield might be more likely to have a companion system like Mass Effect or Dragon Age, where the player is expected to recruit every available companion over the first part of the story. A smaller cast of companion characters also makes Starfield more likely to have romances that go beyond Skyrim’s Amulet of Mara wedding ceremonies, potentially giving each companion more individual dialogue and personality.
Although it will be different than Skyrim’s system, taking full advantage of Starfield’s player ships to let the character build their own crew could be far more rewarding. The companions themselves are more likely to feel fleshed out, something Bethesda showed it can do well with Fallout 4 companions like Nick Valentine and Curie.
Skyrim’s companions don’t really feel like part of the main story outside of companions like Dawnguard’s Serana, who is attached to the DLC’s main questline. There are followers like Lydia that every player picks up while progressing through the main quest who still have shockingly little dialogue commenting on the events of the story.
Starfield’s ship makes the game more likely to limit itself to a small crew of companions, and as a result those companions are more likely to have specific dialogue that comments on the player’s questing as it progresses. That dialogue could happen out on missions, or it could happen back on the ship. Either way, a smaller cast creates the opportunity for Starfield to create characters who feel just as invested in the main story as the player is themself, which isn’t the case with Skyrim’s followers.
Challenges And Opportunities in Starfield
There are a few complicating factors. It appears that the Starfield player will be able to customize their ship to a degree. The ship designs seen so far have been very modular, and the survey question about ship customization solidified it as a feature in the minds of many fans.
If players can customize their ships to too great an extent, Bethesda might struggle to find clear spots for each companion onboard the ship. In Mass Effect 1, for example, Tali can always been found in the engineering bay. If the player’s ship is totally customizable in Starfield, the game might need to handle the player's interactions with the crew more dynamically, with followers allocating their own space on a ship designed by the player.
It seems likely, however, that Starfield will build on Fallout 4’s companion system rather than relying on the formula established in series like Mass Effect. The potential for the game’s ship mechanics to change how it handles companions may seem small, but it could end up being one of the main noticeable differences in design philosophy between Starfield and Skyrim.
It’s still possible that Starfield will have a large number of recruitable companions like Skyrim, but if it does it may have missed an opportunity to develop proper relationships between its companion characters in a way that could make Bethesda’s new setting truly feel alive. The studio may be eager to compare Starfield to Skyrim and to recreate the success of the past, but Starfield will likely have no choice but to strike out on its own, seizing the unique opportunities that come with being a space-set RPG and accepting the challenges that come with them.
Starfield is scheduled to release on November 11, 2022, for PC and Xbox Series X/S.
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