Developer Bethesda Game Studios Publisher Xbox Game Studios Format PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series Release November 11, 2022

Perhaps the two most important words of Microsoft’s showcase came just a few minutes in, at the end of a teaser for Bethesda’s next open-world epic: ‘Xbox exclusive’. It wasn’t the only time we would see them, but this was the moment it became crystal clear that Microsoft would never have spent $7.5bn on the studio behind Skyrim and Fallout if it didn’t plan to keep at least some of its output to itself. Granted, it may be denying itself millions of pounds’ worth of business from PlayStation owners. But a chunk of Sony’s audience may now be wondering if they made the right call – and considering a Game Pass subscription. Despite what some commentators would have you believe, from a platform holder’s point of view it’s surely the smart call.

If at this stage what the game represents is more significant than what it is, that’s because the latter remains ill-defined. “For the first time in over 25 years, we’re creating a new universe,” Todd Howard said, a statement that presumably was supposed to be exciting but merely made the developer appear remarkably conservative. From a more generous standpoint, you could say it’s been so successful by sticking to what it’s good at. Speaking to the Washington Post, Bethesda’s Ashley Cheng likened Starfield to a “Han Solo simulator”. But Howard’s own description is probably more instructive: “Skyrim in space.”

There is an understandable pressure on a game whose teaser reminds us that Bethesda’s first journey to the stars has been a quartercentury in the making. So it’s no great surprise that neither Howard nor the teaser were prepared to give much away. “What you’ve found… it’s the key to unlocking… everything,” a woman’s voice says. “This is all we’ve been working towards,” she continues, breathily. “We’ve come to the beginning of humanity’s final journey.” No shortage of grandiosity, then, but barely anything in the way of specifics.

What we do know is that it’s set more than 300 years in the future, and that you’re part of an organisation called Constellation, whose insistence that you’re “part of our family” suggests corporate speak hasn’t changed much in three centuries. They’re still searching for answers to the great mysteries of the universe, though by the look of things they won’t find many on the drab grey rock of the teaser, in which an astronaut makes his way through a bulky spacecraft, putting his weapon down in the crew quarters as he heads through to the cockpit to prepare for launch. It’ll be almost 18 months until Starfield itself is ready for lift-off, but after 25 years, we can wait a little longer.