Your Starfield character won't have a voice

Your Starfield protagonist won't have a voice, Bethesda has confirmed.

In a tweet following last night's major Starfield gameplay reveal, Bethesda Game Studio told fans that "your character does not have a voice." That's a notable change from Fallout 4's system, in which you'd pick a dialogue option before seeing it acted out by your character, and a return to the system featured throughout games like Skyrim and Fallout 3.

In those games, conversation amounted to a choice of text box, which NPCs would react to instantly. The system was less immersive in some ways, but did at least ensure that you knew exactly what your character was about to say.

One classic Bethesda feature is sticking around however, as the developer confirmed that dialogue would remain first-person. That means, as many eagle-eyed players spotted during the reveal, that we'll be seeing the return of Bethesda's iconic conversation-zoom, anchoring your face to an NPCs whenever a dialogue starts. Popularised in Oblivion, its been a staple of every mainline Fallout and Elder Scrolls game since, and also reared its head in the likes of The Outer Worlds.

We saw quite a lot of Starfield during yesterday's reveal, learning of its galaxy filled with more than 1,000 traversable planets, its detailed character creator, and the existence of the Starfield photo mode. For all that, however, we also saw a game that even dedicated fans can't help but compare to No Man's Sky.

There was no word on a Starfield release date, but Microsoft confirmed that everything announced in the Xbox Bethesda showcase would be playable within the next 12 months, so Starfield should be in our hands by this time next year.

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