Bethesda surprised its fans with big announcements back during E3 2018 when a teaser trailer was shown for The Elder Scrolls 6 and another for a whole new franchise, Starfield. This new IP is a first-person, single-player, sci-fi, space adventure RPG designed. According to Todd Howard, the game came out of the pre-production phase when it was announced, and it was in a playable state. Bethesda started to actively develop the game around when Fallout 4 was finished, but unfortunately, no release date has been provided yet.
Considering its single-player nature, Starfield has to be a big game to be as successful as Skyrim. Hopefully, this will be the case on release, but recently there was a trend of releasing unfinished games and then improving and completing them via DLCs and expansions. The problem Starfield faces is not one that should be neglected, though, because if the game does not prove to be as rich in content as games the caliber of Skyrim, then it may be destined to not retain players for long.
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It is not uncommon for single-player games to be brief experiences for players seeking to complete the story, with some exceptions of some titles. This can be a problem for Starfield if it happens to fall within the former category because its replayability will be limited, and this will damage the game's overall success with lower player retention numbers. Competitors like No Man's Sky have had years to build upon their foundations, while Starfield does need an extra quid for players to consider purchasing it at launch.
Of course, part of Starfield's allure is that it comes from the same developers of other beloved RPG series, and that means that at least players can expect a level of quality that is above average. However, the game has not come out yet and it most likely won't see much follow-up due to the studio having to focus on The Elder Scrolls 6, possibly other projects, or maybe a new Fallout title. Starfield is a new IP, and it can either become a recurring series or it can be a standalone title.
One thing that Bethesda assured its fans with is that The Elder Scrolls 6 will release after Starfield does. This means that it's very likely that most of the crew that worked on the new IP will switch over to TES6, and only a skeleton staff will keep working on Starfield after it launches. Players shouldn't expect new content any time soon after Starfield's release, and of course, it's too soon to talk about the possibility of Starfield 2 actually being a thing. However, it's clear that Bethesda has a busy decade ahead of itself regardless.
What could happen is that Starfield receives a few major updates to fix issues that were not transparent before it becomes available, and then there could be DLCs or expansions in between Bethesda's big projects. This is precisely the reason why it would be beneficial for the longevity of the game that it offered a great number of things to do, places to visit, secrets to discover, and adventures to embark on when it launches, not later. Being a new IP, regardless of how many fans Bethesda already has, Starfield has got to yield some results besides sales. This holds especially true if Bethesda plans on expanding the game's universe in the future or if there already were talks of Starfield 2 being a possibility, however remote that may be.
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Skyrim's success is not merely due to the fact that it was yet another chapter in the beloved The Elder Scrolls saga, but rather to the fact that it was (and still is, after a decade) an incredibly vibrant game. Skyrim offered unique quests, stark new locations teeming with all sorts of lifeforms, lots of improvements from its predecessors, and plenty of exploring to do. To this day, Skyrim still manages to surprise players with things left undiscovered for so long, which is incredible to think for a game that came out in 2011.
Many attribute Skyrim's success to how accessible it became over the years, with most consoles offering methods to play the game, as well as the re-release of the game in the form of a special edition and a VR adaptation. While these factors have quite possibly contributed to the overall extreme success of Skyrim, it was its loving and dedicated modding community that kept the game alive for so long. New mods pop up every day, and some of them were masterpieces that changed the way people played the game and still do.
Starfield should build upon Skyrim's legacy, despite the games being quite different from one another. Still, with all the assets that Bethesda has, it is in the realm of possibility that Starfield too will have a dedicated workshop for players to mod it over and over as they please. After all, letting players modify the game in ways they enjoy is a win-win situation because of how happy gamers can be with the product, feeling they get multiple times its monetary value in terms of fun, and it is great for Starfield's longevity.
Ultimately, if the game is as big as Skyrim, then it is safe to assume that its own bequest will become a benchmark for other Bethesda games or even for competitor titles to come in the future. With Starfield being a space adventure-themed game, and with it drawing inspiration from both the '40s aviation and Elon Musk's SpaceX, it may include a certain degree of difficulty with many elements to keep an eye on. Nonetheless, Starfield is also coming with one of the biggest engine overhauls that the studio ever made, according to Howard, which hopefully does not affect the size of the game in the end, despite it taking a long time to finish.
Starfield is in development.
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