Todd Howard says that Starfield's New Game Plus was "us asking you this weird, deep question that I actually think got lost on a lot of people"

A lot of changes came to Starfield as part of the Free Lanes update. Some are small, like refinements to customization and exploration, while others are far larger – such as the introduction of deep-space travel between planets in a star system. But no change is perhaps quite as profound as the one that's happened to Starfield's New Game+ progression system.

"I'm still used to saying this is a spoiler, but I don't think it is anymore," laughs Todd Howard, game director and executive producer. Let's err on the side of caution here and say for those of you who didn't finish Starfield (or are perhaps coming to the game for the very first time on PS5) you may want to turn away now. For the rest of you, let's dig into the Starfield ending.

When you complete the final Starfield story mission, One Giant Leap, you are presented with the option of going through the Unity. If you do this, your character will become Starborn and spawn into a brand new universe. You keep all of your powers, skills, level progression, and experience – and have the opportunity to become substantially more powerful through subsequent playthroughs. This comes at the cost of all of your mission progression, outposts, relationships with characters, ships, map data, and yes, all of your hard earned weapons, outfits, and items. It's a big decision to make.

"The Unity was our way of doing New Game+," says Howard. "It was us asking you this weird, deep question that I actually think got lost on a lot of people. It asks if you are just this power gamer who wants to get everything, or are you willing to leave this world behind? How do you feel about your own life choices – would you leave that all behind and start over? Some of that pain – having to give up all of your stuff, Sarah Morgan not loving you anymore, and so on – is supposed to make you feel all of that."

Tim Lamb, lead creative producer of Starfield, tells me that Bethesda knew early on that it wanted a compelling New Game Plus loop in place for this cosmic adventure. He points back to the disappointment many fans had at the conclusion of Fallout 3 being instructive here. "The game just ended. The feedback we got at the time was that fans were surprised – they wanted to keep going. So we put this system into Starfield; we wanted it to be a meaningful choice, but it wasn't meant to be suffering."

Reach for the Stars

Howard was clearly inspired by Edge of Tomorrow for the endgame progression loop Starfield launched with. "It's one of my favorite movies," he says, recalling the ending of the 2014 sci-fi film (directed by Doug Liman; starring Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt) with an almost gleeful melancholy. I'm with Howard on this one: if you're interested in an action film with an excellent time loop concept, it's well worth your time. Still, Howard says that the weight of these decisions may have been lost on players. "So we create this feeling of 'hey, you have to leave everything you did behind', but as a gamer, you're like, 'I just want to go through the magic gate and get more power.'"

Howard says the team ultimately decided, as it began thinking about what to include in the Free Lanes update, to make some alterations. "If you decide to enter the Unity now, you can do it in a way that you feel that you can still continue your character and have some of your stuff – it's stuff that you earned, after all."

Lamb reflects further on the challenge it inadvertently put on players: "The attachment that players felt to the things that they had gathered up to that point meant that they didn't want to part with their items. It was a bridge too far – a sacrifice too meaningful. There's so many exciting things that can happen in our New Game Plus loop that we wanted to give a bit of encouragement."

So in an effort to compel players into the unknown, Bethesda will now let you build a Quantum Entanglement Device. "This will allow you to take most inventory items through the Unity and into the Lodge when you arrive on the other side," says Lamb, noting that the 50 capacity device will accept most (but not all) items, letting you keep hold of your favorite weapons and suits, as well as key resources. The decision to make this change, he tells me, was spurred on by the decision to introduce more robust weapon and suit upgrade opportunities through the Free Lanes update.

"Then we are introducing X-Tech to further upgrade your weapons and your gear; well, we don't want to ask the player to put in a lot of work for a reward they are searching for, only to say, 'no, it's gone now.' So once these things started coming together, we knew we absolutely had to do something like this," he says.

Bethesda has also taken steps to better bring "Quantum Essence into the economy, to give it more power and make it more meaningful." This rare item could be accrued by defeating Starborn enemies, but didn't have all that much value beyond power regeneration. Not only will you now be able to get Quantum Essence from destroying Starborn Ships, you can also use it to upgrade Starborn powers, taking the sting out of going through the Unity and reclaiming the associated artifacts each time.

I get the sense that Howard is a little disappointed that Bethesda had to make this sort of change to Starfield, that it almost interrupts the romanticism of the story and final decision. Still, Howard is clear that making refinements to what he calls the 'elder loop' of the game (i.e. the way Starfield plays over extended durations) were essential, and will be moving forward.

"Take something like the Trackers Alliance, or other quests. You do them and then you're done. That's still rewarding, but for someone who jumps back in, they might play for a few hours – and then the update didn't serve them beyond those two or three hours. We want to be trying to do more things that update the game where it's going to change the next 100 hours," says Howard. "You can tell us if we're done our job right."

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