Todd Howard promises Starfield has ‘a lot of surprises’ but we’ve been here before

Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies (please not this time).

Image of a Starfield character piloting a space ship. The character is white and is wearing a space helmet.
Image via Bethesda

During Gamescom’s opening night on Aug. 22, Bethesda presented a new Starfield trailer, after which studio director Todd Howard emerged on the scene. During his short presentation, he promised the game has “a lot of surprises,” but this isn’t the first time we’ve heard something similar from him.

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Those who eagerly wait for Starfield’s Sept. 6 release could look at the game’s live-action trailer during Gamescom 2023. The developers have already showcased a bunch of features in the past few months, but, as Howard promised at Gamescom, it still has numerous aspects we haven’t seen yet. We hope he’s right this time around.

Those who enjoy Bethesda games and follow the industry know that Howard is known for occasionally overselling the company’s productions. This has even been made into memes a few times.

The most notable case of this was likely during Fallout 76’s marketing. At 2018’s E3, Howard said the game will have four times the map size of Fallout 4, 16 times the detail, and a bunch of new technologies, just to give a few examples. We all know how the release of the multiplayer Fallout game turned out to be (which was “horribly”).

Related: The 7 most anticipated Starfield features

Therefore, many fans take Bethesda’s promises with a grain of salt and wait for Starfield’s initial reviews and user opinions before getting on the hype train. Although it’s not an easy feat to do, I wanted to stray away from it as well, but I must admit I’ve been hooked on it for a few weeks, and it just keeps getting stronger with every day closer to the premiere.

Related: 10 big Starfield questions still left unanswered ahead of release

So I’ll just take Todd’s word for it and believe him that Starfield is indeed a true Game of the Year contender, as memorable and full of surprises as The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim was. Let’s hope this time the studio doesn’t disappoint, especially since it’s now under Microsoft’s direction, and we will all be exciting bug-less space and enjoying ourselves come September.

Author
Image of Mateusz Miter
Mateusz Miter
Freelance Writer at Dot Esports. Mateusz previously worked for numerous outlets and gaming-adjacent companies, including ESL. League of Legends or CS:GO? He loves them both. In fact, he wonders which game he loves more every day. He wanted to go pro years ago, but somewhere along the way decided journalism was the more sensible option—and he was right.