Dialogue is often what shapes the finer nuances of a gaming experience. No matter how immersive the world is or how groundbreaking the graphics are, without good dialogue, adventure and exploration can be far less compelling. As it turns out, we don’t have to worry about this being one of the challenges that Starfield will be facing.
In a recent interview, Todd Howard, the CEO of Bethesda and Game Director of Starfield, stated that the company has ‘gone back to kind of a classic Bethesda-style dialogue’ for the new space exploration title. Going on what we know as the classic Bethesda-style dialogue setup, we can assume that the player will look directly at the speaking character before responding with numerous unique dialogue options.
However, you’ll likely have a lot more options than in previous Bethesda entries. In his interview, Howard revealed that Starfield currently contains in excess of 250,000 lines of dialogue. Just to put that number into perspective, it’s more than double the lines of dialogue in Fallout 4. Given that the protagonist in Starfield is silent, none of these will be delivered by the player.
Howard also lets us see an example conversation between the player and either a pirate or raider character. This gives us a good look at what kind of dynamics we can expect to see when the game launches. One of the most interesting aspects of this reveal is that the player has the ability to smooth-talk whoever they’re talking to. However, players likely won’t be able to use this option ad nauseum as interactions function on a points system.
It takes more points to try and persuade other characters. Additionally, the player is also limited in how many times they can try and persuade someone. Howard didn’t show us what happens when the player’s points run out, but given that this is a Bethesda title, we can only assume that this conundrum will be resolved by violence.
If you’ve missed other recent reveals about Starfield, it’s been confirmed that Starfield will have dogfighting, space exploration, and so much more!
