Starfield’s Todd Howard says ending might be “a little controversial”

Starfield director and Bethesda RPG game maker Todd Howard thinks the game’s ending might “a little controversial,” and with today marking the full Starfield release date, only time will tell how players react to it.

Ahead of today’s full release of Starfield, Howard was asked if what Bethesda has created might be too sprawling and ambitious.

“I wouldn’t say I worry about it,” Howard tells NPR. “I do think the ending of the game might be a little controversial. We ask a lot of questions. We don’t provide a lot of answers. Because I think we want a lot of those answers to be in you.”

Beware of minor Starfield spoilers beyond this point.

It’s unclear exactly what part of the Starfield ending Howard is talking about here, but I’d wager it ties directly into how the narrative wraps into the optional Starfield new game plus. Starfield only carries over specific parts of your initial playthrough into the new game plus mode, and while it has a solid narrative reason for doing so, there’s a lot of chatter about how players should approach their first playthrough because of this.

One prevailing suggestion is to blitz through the main story and choose all the perks you actually want as you go, and experience the rest of the game the second time around. Certain rewards are more powerful and a couple of quests can change too, so there is some merit to doing just this.

You will have to bond with your Starfield companions again and rebuild any Starfield outposts, but you do keep your traits. All in all, though, I do respect Bethesda’s decision to tie a decades-old game mechanic directly into the narrative of Starfield. While I won’t mention how it is they do that, we end up getting some borderline Nier Automata levels of storytelling and ideas.

While you explore the Bethesda space game you’ll want to read our breakdown of the best Starfield weapons, and if you’re starting today we’ve got the low down on all the Starfield backgrounds as well.

Still looking for more? While a good Starfield wiki can be a handy source of information, our new Starfield Database goes further, offering you daily news, searchable databanks, and even interactive tools.