Your Starfield Companions will be watching your actions just as much as you'll be watching theirs.
Bethesda revealed new details about how you'll interact with the Starfield NPCs you travel with over the course of the game in a new developer diary video.
"No matter what story we write, the one the players tell themselves is the one they think about and love the most – and the companions," said Bethesda Game Studios head Todd Howard.
With that in mind, the developers explained how Starfield's Companion characters have been improved and further fleshed out in the upcoming RPG.
"Something we really leaned into on this game is how the other characters felt about you," explained Howard.
To that end, the team explained how they wanted more out of the Companions to make them more believable. Now they'll get to know and form bonds with each other, make comments on the things that you do, and become a type of mirror for the type of person you're becoming over the course of the game. It's all in a bid to make them feel more realistic and grounded.
"That’s probably my favourite part, like when you’re exploring and then your companion makes some comment off the cuff about something that you’re checking out or something that just happened," said lead artist Istvan Pely. "That just feels so perfect for immersion. It’s just so believable, you think it’s a real person."
In the same clip, we also got our first look at one Companion character that you'll be traveling with: VASCO the robot. It's unclear what type of interactions will be available with VASCO at this point, but imagining responses from this loader-style bot is all the more interesting with what Bethesda has in mind.
The team also discussed some type of persuasion minigame as part of this new system, which feels more like you're "trying" to persuade someone of something. This will more than likely reflect on how you interact with your Companions as well.
There's still quite a ways to go until we can experience Starfield for ourselves, as it's due out for a November 11 release on Xbox Series X and PC. But these tidbits are certainly something to chew on.
Starfield is one of the most anticipated upcoming Xbox Series X games, but when will we see it in action? There's always a chance Microsoft will give it a big reveal in June, although it is yet to officially book out any time in the E3 2022 schedule.
