At E3 2018 Bethesda finally officially announced Starfield, the company’s first foray into the realm of epic spacefaring sci-fi. We only got to see a brief teaser for Starfield, but Bethesda Game Studios executive producer Todd Howard did reveal the game would be a “next-generation, single-player game.” Hmmmm! So, what did he mean by next-generation, exactly? Will we need to buy new hardware to play the game? Quite possibly, although in a recent interview with Eurogamer, Howard clarified he was also using the term in another sense.

　　"[Next-generation] to us means two things. It does mean hardware and it does mean software on our side, and it also means gameplay - what does the next generation of epic single-player RPGs feel like to us? What systems we put it out on, what's the hardware requirements – [that’s] still to be determined. We're pushing it. We're thinking very, very far in future so we're building something that will handle next-generation hardware. That's what we're building on right now, that's where our mind is, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't exist on the current systems as well."

　　Howard also elaborated on the “single-player” part of his brief Starfield description. Will the game be a traditional Bethesda single-player RPG similar in feel to Skyrim or classic Fallout titles? Well…

　　"I don't want to say yes or no to that, because I don't know what that means to you. It's different, but if you sit down and play it you would recognize it as something we made, if that makes sense? It has our DNA in it. It has things that we like. But it has a lot of new systems we've been thinking about for a while that fit that kind of game really well. We'll talk about it in the future.”

　　According to Howard, Bethesda first began discussing Starfield in 2004 and active development began in 2015, so, clearly, the project isn’t lacking in ambition. If the game ends up feeling a little different than past Bethesda games, honestly, that's fine with me. It’s time for Bethesda to stretch their legs and try something fresh, and I’d rather they experiment with a new IP than try to twist the Elder Scrolls or Fallout into something they weren’t meant to be.

　　Starfield doesn’t have a release date yet, and is likely (at least) a couple years out. The waaaaiting is the hardest part.