Can you change your background in Starfield?

You can't erase the past.

Displays the player character in a museum in New Atlantis in Starfield.
Screenshot by Dot Esports.

Bethesda’s latest absolute unit of a game, Starfield, gives you plenty of freedoms when it comes to customizing your experience. You can create ships from scratch, travel anywhere in the universe, become a pirate, and even visit your parents.

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In fact, there are so many choices to make it can become daunting. Customization potential is awesome, but sometimes players can become worried they might regret their choices later. Certain choices in Starfield can be undone later, and others are locked in. One choice you’ll be making at the very start of the game is selecting a background for your character.

Can you undo your background choice in Starfield?

When selecting a background, you should make sure you’ve done your research and will be happy with your choice, as there is no way to change your background once you leave the character creation menu.

Backgrounds don’t have a huge impact on your experience in Starfield, so if you’ve played for dozens of hours, it probably isn’t worth starting over just to have a new background.

Once you beat Starfield, you will unlock a new game plus option, and starting a new playthrough this way will let you choose a fresh background. Really, this isn’t any different than starting over—it exists for people who want to experience the game again with different choices but aren’t ready to say goodbye to their current character.

Once out of character creation, only appearance can be changed. Screenshot by Dot Esports.

Technically speaking, you can use console commands to remove all traits associated with your current background and add all traits associated with a new one, but doing so will mark your save as Modded and you will no longer be able to earn achievements on that character, so we don’t recommend it. If you soldier on and learn to live with your choice of background, chances are you’ll forget about the whole thing before long.

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Pierce Bunch
Freelance writer and jack-of-all-games.