The retro games that inspired Starfield, according to Todd Howard

Bethesda has published a brief video in which creative director Todd Howard discusses Starfield, including some unexpected influences on the hotly-anticipated RPG.

Asked about Starfield's inspirations, Howard says, "I'm gonna go back in time here. SunDog is a big one. Amazing game, kind of like the science fiction game when Ultimas were out. It also had this parser-less interface, kind of one of the first games where you're moving objects around and putting them together. But a great game, where you had your own ship and you could explore around, that I loved."

SunDog: Frozen Legacy was initially released by FTL Games in 1984 for the Apple II. It's effectively a trading game where you fly from planet to planet buying and selling commodities, occasionally beset by pirates that you have to fight. There are big cities to explore, populated with businesses and randomly-appearing characters ranging from street vendors to muggers. Richard Garriott, legendary creator of Ultima, once called it his favorite game of all time, describing it as "basically Ultima meets Wing Commander."

Howard also cites some non-video gaming inspirations for Starfield. "This is a pen and paper role-playing game at the time D&D was getting popular - this game Traveller," he continues. 

"Traveller was a little more hard science-fiction. The other thing there, it was one of the first games I programmed on the Apple II at the time, I really wanted to make a Traveller game. It was also my first time realizing that computers had memory that you could run out of. I can already see the comments, people saying 'you've been running computers out of memory for 40 years now.'"

Traveller was first published in 1977 by Game Designers' Workshop, and has been around in various forms ever since. Editions exist for well-known tabletop rulesets like GURPS and the d20 system, though the most modern version, by Mongoose Publishing, hearkens back to the original rules. Sadly, Howard's SunDog Apple II game never made it to the public.

Howard says Starfield is "hearkening back to those old role-playing games that we loved" as Bethesda says "'hey, can we pull off something like this with today's computers and consoles and et cetera.'"

Howard also confirmed that Starfield will have four times as much dialogue as Skyrim. Check out our guides to Starfield ship customization or Starfield crafting for more on what we know about the game so far.