Todd Howard, the Executive Producer at Bethesda Softworks, presented Starfield’s conversation system, comparing the dialogue sequences to Fallout and Skyrim.

During a recent interview, Todd Howard revealed some details about Starfield’s dialogue system, which points towards a return of persuasion, a common conversational tool in Fallout and The Elder Scrolls games. Fans of The Elder Scrolls and Fallout can continue to enjoy the dialogue systems in the franchises, but Starfield seems to be taking the formula a critical step further.

Conversations have played a prominent role in many of Bethesda Softworks’ games over the years, with luck and charisma attributes being used to achieve more favourable outcomes.

Based on some Starfield screenshots shared alongside an internal interview with Todd Howard, this could continue to be the case in Bethesda’s big next-gen RPG. In a YouTube video posted on Bethesda Softworks’ channel, Howard went into more detail about several features, including the aforementioned dialogue system.

In response to Reddit, Discord and Twitter questions, Bethesda Softworks’ community director Jess Finster sat down with Howard to reveal some details about the upcoming Starfield. When asked about the speech controls and dialogue options in Bethesda’s previous games, Howard took a moment to focus on the return of persuasion, which has been changed to a mini-game that uses points to dictate how successfully you convince an NPC of something.

Like Skyrim or Fallout, players walk up to a Starfield NPC to initiate a conversation sequence with them, choosing one of the 3-4 options in a menu that looks more like Fallout New Vegas than the controversial Fallout 4 system.

Todd Howard says Starfield is “a return to classic Bethesda-style dialogue”.

Characters will have over 250,000 lines to choose from, dwarfing dialogue from other significant franchises. The video interview continues with a graphic highlighting the comparison with Skyrim, which had just 60,000 lines of dialogue, and Fallout 4, with a hefty 111,000 lines. This means that combining the conversations of Skyrim and Fallout 4 would still pale compared to what’s available in Bethesda’s latest RPG.

While many Bethesda fans looking forward to the studio’s next big RPG are enthusiastic about the dialogue and the hint of a changed belief system, others on social media remain sceptical about how the game will evolve after the changes. Most of Bethesda Softworks’ YouTube video reactions are overwhelmingly positive, pointing to significant moments in Fallout and The Elder Scrolls. Still, it remains to be seen what the highlights of Starfield will be.

Source: YouTube