Last year, a familiar topic popped up in PC Gamer Slack’s work from time to time: “Do you think Starfield is truth Will it come out in 2022?”
Virtually everyone agreed: no way. Almost everyone at PC Gamer was pretty sure it wouldn’t see the light of day until 2023. Skyrim in Space, popular opinion, was definitely being delayed.
But somehow I… didn’t think it was? I can’t say I’m completely stunned by the news, because games get delayed all the time. But until yesterday I would bet money that it was going to hit its release date. (Not a lot of money. Some money. Like $28.)
I have no problem with being completely wrong – it’s something I have a lot of experience with. But it’s hard not to feel a little shy about missing the mark on this one. The writing is on the wall, and I saw it. I read. I just didn’t interpret it as pointing to a delay.
How Rich points in your article: Why haven’t we seen any real footage of Starfield yet? Certainly, if the game was ready to rock, some images would be rolling right now.
Well, I personally thought Bethesda was just doing what they did before. We only got our first real look at Fallout 76 at E3 2018, a few months before it was released in November of the same year. And with Starfield there has been slow growth, pre-E3 over the last couple of months, as Bethesda has released some short, unsatisfying videos about the game and the soundtrack, featuring developers sitting in a room telling each other how good everything is, though not really showing any real gameplay.
But that didn’t raise any red flags for me. I just realized they were saving it for the Xbox & Bethesda Games Showcase in June, which I think is probably still the plan. And I don’t think the lack of gameplay footage was a real sign that anything was wrong. I mean, if the game is so far from finished that Bethesda can’t even edit a gameplay trailer for it, then it won’t be done in 2023 either.
I also thought that, having recently been bought by Microsoft for $110 billion, Bethesda would likely move heaven and earth to hit its release date. If I were Mike Microsoft (I assume that’s the name of the owner of Microsoft), I’d be constantly showing up in the Bethesda sector of the Microsoft Mansion (I assume that’s where everyone who works at Microsoft lives), knocking on the door, and demanding that they a) let me play, and b) assure me it will be released on time.
“Well, it’s not over yet, Mike,” Todd Howard could say as my massive bodyguards dragged him over to me. And I would say, “First, call me Mr. Microsoft. And second, I paid eleven billion dollars for this. So I think It’s pretty finished. Todd“
There was also the novelty release date of 11/11/22, which has historical significance for Bethesda’s RPGs (Skyrim was released on 11/11/11). It looked like it would be extremely difficult to give this up for some other game. What if TMNT: The Cowabunga Collection casually slips into that spot and steals all your eleven? It would be a sick burn.
But the real reason I didn’t think Stardfield would be delayed was because I just couldn’t imagine Bethesda saying what everyone says when a game is delayed: we need more time to polish the game.
Bethesda’s RPGs, from Oblivion to Skyrim to Fallout 4 and 76, are notoriously unpolished. Bethesda’s Games I have been buggy. Failure. Janky. Rough around the edges. I know times have changed and we don’t like the clunky nature of Bethesda’s RPGs as much as we used to (particularly when it comes to Fallout 76). But I don’t think most people would be seriously outraged by a few bugs in Starfield like they were for a game like Cyberpunk 2077. I figured Bethesda would roll the dice and throw the game on target, jank and all.
But I was wrong. More time is needed to polish, apparently. I would never have predicted this, but as all this shows, my predictive meter could clearly mean some recalibration.