It turns out Bethesda built a Starfield New Game plus mode, and it’s not your usual action game replay with higher level caps and more loot. Bethesda executive producer Todd Howard briefly teased the mode in a new interview with GQ and mentioned it puts a big twist on how you experience the game and encourages you to replay in new and different ways.
Howard didn’t have anything else to say about it, but it’s kind of a big deal. Bethesda games usually don’t have New Game plus of any description, not even a replay mode where you just get a higher level cap and better equipment. Fans have made mods that work with varying degrees of efficiency over the years, but normally, once you finish Fallout or Skyrim, you just have to start from scratch again.
There’s usually enough variation in how you play and the endings you get that these new playthroughs still feel fresh. With 1,000 planets and nearly half a dozen factions to ally yourself with in Starfield, it seemed like that would probably be the case in the space game as well, so the blurb about a “new twist” that incentivizes replays is quite the tease.
Will there be branching story paths, different character interactions, or maybe even time travel? Starfield’s mysterious time-and-space-bending artifacts mean anything is theoretically possible, though there’s always a chance we’ll just get special cosmetics or weapons that don’t really change the game instead.
Starfield launches on Sep. 6, 2023, for Xbox Series X|S, Windows, and Steam.
Written by Josh Broadwell on behalf of GLHF
