Inside the making of Bethesda’s ‘Starfield’ — one of the biggest stories ever

The scale of Starfield is enormous, as are the possibilities for players.

Bethesda Softworks

It’s a Wednesday night, and I’ve found my way to Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. Its surface is harsh and uninviting. If I were to remove my spacesuit, I’d die. But inside an airlocked space station, a small colony of human settlers call this place home.

Bill, a cheerful tour guide, greets me at the kitschy museum, full of artifacts from Earth. He explains that in 2130, Titan was the first place humans colonized after they left the blue planet. Down a flight of stairs, there’s an industrial-looking set of rooms filled with rusty shipping containers. This, we soon learn, is where some of Titan’s inhabitants live.

“Space is extremely limited,” Bill remarks. “So you’ll notice some overflow here.”

A woman nearby sees this area differently, suggesting things might be a bit more complicated than Bill has let on.

“The crates are what we call the living quarters of the poor people,” she says. “Like me.”

Welcome to Starfield, a new video game decades in the making. The studio behind it says it has 3 million words of dialogue and includes more than 1,000 environments players can explore across multiple galaxies.

It’s no exaggeration to say this might be one of the biggest stories ever told — in any medium. It also has real life consequences for the developers who are banking on the game’s success being as grand as their vision.

What sets video games apart

Starfield’s story shoots for the stars, but it was born right here on Earth.

At Bethesda Game Studios in Maryland, a trophy case starts on the first floor of the building and…