Ever since Starfield was announced at E3 2018 Bethesda has been extremely quiet about the upcoming title. Aside from the fact that the game will be a single-player RPG set in space, very little has actually been confirmed about the studios plans for its gameplay or story.
However, there have been many reliable leaks which can tell Bethesda fans a lot about what they might be able to expect from Starfield. Not only that, but some new images and information have only recently come to light, generating more speculation. Here's every Starfield rumor and leak so far, which ones are the most reliable, and what they might tell fans about Bethesda's first new IP in over 25 years.
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Some of the earliest Starfield leaks appeared on Reddit, posted by a throwaway account with the username Electrical-Ad-8659. The first image shows an astronaut standing before what looks like a building. Fans were quick to notice the character's compass, which was shown up close in another image.
This compass appeared to show the levels of Oxygen and Co2 in the air, the environment's gravity, and several other factors fans found harder to determine. This immediately led to speculation that Starfield will have survival mechanics of some kind. The gravity meter and the jetpack the astronaut seems to be wearing also led to rumors that Starfield could be taking advantage of a significant upgrade to Bethesda's engine which could allow for physics to be rendered more robustly.
Also posted to Reddit was an image of a spaceship. The ship's design appeared modular to many fans, as if it could be broken down into key components. This has led to rumors that Starfield will allow for in-depth ship creation and customization. The building shown in the first image also led to speculation that Starfield would expand upon the settlement building mechanics Bethesda has been developing from Skyrim's Hearthfire DLC through to Fallout 4 and Fallout 76.
More evidence for this claim appeared when a fourth image was leaked, supposedly by the same person behind the first three pictures. This image showed the same player character standing before a construct which looked perfectly designed for a flexible in-game building system. These first four leaks appeared to be confirmed during Brighton Digital 2020. Bethesda's managing director Ashley Cheng was wearing a shirt during the conference which had a logo on it identical to the shoulder patch of the astronaut in the image. Not all of the leaks since have been as reliable, however.
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Twitter user and YouTuber Skullzi posted an image showing a first-person perspective of landscape which they claimed was from Starfield. The compass in the bottom left certainly matches the ones in the previous leaks, but some fans were more doubtful this time around. One Reddit user claimed the picture was a screenshot from Myrdalssandur, a free-to-play VR experience that allows players to explore the southern coast of Iceland.
Todd Howard himself also made comments about Starfield during his appearance at Brighton Digital 2020. Howard said that both The Elder Scrolls 6 and Starfield would make greater use of procedural generation, and would have bigger cities than previous Bethesda RPGs have been able to handle.
Starfield will almost certainly take place across multiple planets, though the bare-boned backgrounds of the original four leaked screenshots make determining the environments players might run into difficult. Procedural generation means that vast landscapes will be generated by computer in advance and then detailed by developers, not that players will experience different randomly generated worlds. This means that Starfield's in-game galaxy could be very large, but it is unlikely to approach the size of games that generate landscapes in-game like Minecraft, No Man's Sky, or The Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall.
Another leak came in April 2020 when YouTuber MrMattyPlays claimed that a Bethesda contact told him that Starfield is still set for a 2021 release. To back up his claim he showed a screenshot from Bethesda's website with Starfield's 2021 copyright reservation. This does not necessarily mean that Starfield will release in 2021, though many Bethesda games are copyrighted for their year of release.
Industry insider Rand al Thor also made some claims about Starfield on the Xbox Two Podcast, saying that "very reliable people" had told him that Starfield will be an Xbox exclusive. This is a rumor that has been circulating ever since Microsoft began its acquisition of ZeniMax Media Inc, Bethesda's parent company. As a new IP, Starfield has often been considered the most likely Bethesda RPG to become an Xbox exclusive, though whether it will also apply to future Fallout and Elder Scrolls games remains unknown. Rand al Thor also claimed that Starfield was in a playable condition and was in "bug squashing mode."
Earlier this month, an image was leaked which seemed to show sketches from a Bethesda concept artist. The drawings show several distinct spaceship designs, what appears to be a space station, and a wristwatch which resembles some of the elements seen in the UI's compass. The image was posted to ResetEra, and while there's no way to tell if it's real or not the designs themselves will have many Bethesda fans convinced.
That wasn't the only piece of Starfield news to come out this May, however. Between May 9 and May 10 several posts appeared which showed screenshots of a Bethesda survey which appeared to reference Starfield. This survey seems to confirm some major points of speculation. One question asks players to rank how much time they spent creating their characters, their homes, and their spaceships. This adds a great deal of support to the idea that Starfield will include customizable ships and an expansion of the Fallout settlement system. However, that was the only question in the survey which seemed to reference Starfield directly.
As E3 2021 approaches this June, many Bethesda fans will be anticipating a full Starfield reveal. After three years this could finally confirm which leaks and rumors were correct and which were false, though at this point the initial four screenshots and Starfield's rumored building system seem very reliable. Until Bethesda shows the game in full, however, fans may still be in for a surprised.
Starfield is in development.