What this early reveal does do, however, is give Bethesda room to talk about it. There’s been a steady stream of concept art the past few months, but it seems Bethesda had more it wanted to reveal for March. Bethesda recently discussed Starfield’s character origins, how stats impact them, how backgrounds change the in-game start, and perhaps most interestingly, how it is using a borrowing from Oblivion’s persuasion system with NPCs.
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Dialogue options in any RPG are important, but what ends up happening is players are left picking one of a few options—with that often only slightly tweaking what follows. In Oblivion, Bethesda tried something different by making persuasion a mini-game based around a pie chart of sorts, with reactions being based on the NPC, the goal, how active the player is, and so on. It was pretty simplistic still, with there being a limited number of emotions and reactions involved.
It seems Bethesda has taken that and expanded on it in Starfield, although the company stops short of showing off or explaining it properly. It’s unlikely to be just an updated version of the mini-game, instead expanding on it in new ways. As said in the new Made for Wanderers video seen above, Bethesda discusses how it didn’t set out to revamp the Oblivion system, but that it went well with its goals. “We didn’t want it to be a system where there was definitely the right thing to say.”
The goal, it seems, is to move away from that game-y choose-a-dialogue-option style of in-game conversations, making the conversations in Starfield something more realistic. According to Bethesda’s Todd Howard, “[I]t feels like you’re having a conversation where you’re actually trying to persuade somebody of something. As far as new systems dialogue, I think it’s definitely one of the most successful ones that we’ve had.”
For now, however, Bethesda is still quite hush-hush about Starfield, all the while seemingly opening up more and more as time passes. Fans can expect Starfield gameplay this summer, and it’s likely then fans may get a glimpse into how this returning Oblivion feature has been expanded upon.
Starfield is in development for PC and Xbox Series X.
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