With over 250,000 lines of dialogue and reports claiming that the game’s main quest will be about 20% bigger than previous games, it seems that Bethesda is opening the year with a colossus release. This is a good sign for the developer’s first new IP in years. The rumor about the opinion of the playtesters originates from the latest episode of the XNC podcast, on which host Colt Eastwood claimed to have heard from people close to the playtesting team that the game is ”bigger and more ambitious than what was previously expected”. It is bigger than anything [Bethesda Game Studios] did in Skyrim,” he noted. “It takes everything they’ve done in Fallout and Skyrim and raises it. These are obviously big shoes to fill and even Eastwood himself said that he doesn’t want to accidentally oversell Starfield. People may question the legitimacy of the claims made by the content creator, but this is the same information pipeline that alerted the gaming community about the Cyberpunk 2077 bugs upon launch. From The Elder Scrolls to Skyrim and Fallout, Bethesda has managed to outdo itself every time. Titles like these not only define the company’s success but also put a lot of pressure on the team behind it, which is especially true considering the new IP is the first one in 25 years for Bethesda Softworks. New IPs are always a leap of faith and Microsoft’s acquisition of Bethesda has put the onus on them. Even Starfield director Todd Howard is feeling the heat, claiming Starfield’s delays are due to expectations of the game being a platform seller. Working with some of the top engineers at Xbox on the title must be a recipe for success and if these reports are true we can be easily looking at an early candidate for game of the year.
