For a game that was originally supposed to release last year, we haven't seen a whole lot of space RPG Starfield. The best look we have is an edited 15-minute gameplay trailer from last year. But now, following a delay out of 2022, we finally have the official launch date: September 6.
"We have poured ourselves into this game, and even I'm surprised at how much we can pour. It is large," Bethesda's Todd Howard said in the announcement video. "We're playing the game all the time—shout-out over here to lead producer Tim Lamb—old-school fans, you may remember him from a 'making of' Oblivion video, where he's sitting on a similar sofa, doing similar things."
The new date is a bit of a delay, as Starfield was previously expected to be out in the first half of 2023. What we'll get instead in that time frame is a Starfield Direct presentation, which Howard said will deliver a "deep dive in the game," on June 11.
"There's so much that we still have to show you," he said. "The game has many of the hallmarks you'd expect from us, but it's also a very unique experience."
It's a little more of a wait that we expected, but what's another few months at this point? Starfield was first teased around five years ago, and "active development" started all the way back when Fallout 4 released in 2015, according to a 2018 interview (opens in new tab). (At this rate, I figure we'll be playing The Elder Scrolls 6 sometime around 2031.)
Bethesda was reportedly one of the Microsoft subsidiaries affected by the 10,000 layoffs the corporation announced earlier this year, though we haven't heard any details on the extent of that affect.
Recently, I looked back over the Starfield interviews and developer chats from the past few years to extract some of the details about the game I find most interesting—like that you can have parents, and visit them—and Chris examined some convincing fan theories about the main quest.
