Bethesda just dropped a trio of animated Starfield trailers showcasing the vibes of some of the game's major settlements, and it seems the highly-anticipated RPG aims to encompass just about every sci-fi genre you can imagine.
The Settled Systems - A Starfield Animated Anthology tells the dialog-free stories of characters making their way in three of the biggest Starfield cities. The animation is a bit limited, but the aesthetics are absolutely gorgeous, with anime-style character designs and impeccably-staged action sequences created in an eye-catching sketchbook style.
The first of these, Supra Et Ultra, follows a courier pilot named Kent as he chases his dreams of living in New Atlantis and eventually finds a life of spacefaring adventure even more appealing. This trailer is pure space opera, drawing in equal parts from the utopian cityscapes of Star Trek and the pulpy space battles of Star Wars - just look at that Empire Strikes Back-style asteroid chase.
Then there's Where Hope is Built, which takes us to Akila City to meet Vanna, an orphan of the Colony Wars looking to repair her ship and reach the stars. This one is pure Gundam, with lavish mecha action building to the melancholy tale of a new generation working through the wreckage of the old.
Finally, we have The Hand that Feeds, which takes us to Neon in order to see the extremely cyberpunk misadventures of the petty criminals Ada and Harper. While stories of street rats eking out a living on neon-soaked streets have been integral to the genre from the start, it's tough to see them tied to a big open-world RPG without thinking of Cyberpunk 2077 - particularly with Phantom Liberty launching so close to Starfield on September 26.
While the cities themselves had previously been detailed, these specific characters had not, and now I'm immensely curious about whether they'll appear in the game itself. We already knew Starfield was going to be massive, and it seems Bethesda is confident it's more than large enough to encompass a big array of varied sci-fi vibes.
There are plenty of new games for 2023, but arguably none of them are bigger than Starfield.
