
In a Q&A to celebrate Starfield's symbolic "gone gold" milestone (which has been reposted to the subreddit), lead quest designer Will Shen was asked if entirely non-lethal playthroughs will be possible in Bethesda's space RPG. They won't be, although Shen says that Bethesda did consider the possibility of supporting pacifist playthroughs early in development.
"We talked about this very early on during pre-production, whether or not we would fully support a 'non-lethal' playthrough," said Shen. "We realized that, for various reasons, that wasn't totally feasible."