Though the recent Xbox Showcase has finally relieved some of the pressure on Starfield's shoulders, there's still a lot riding on the game, with it being Xbox's next big first-party title and Bethesda's chance at the limelight. Thankfully, things are looking pretty great so far. Even if it's understandable for fans to be skeptical of Bethesda, especially when its trailers use a lot of the same hyped-up language that Fallout 76 and Fallout 4 used, the recent Starfield deep-dive gave fans a 45-minute overview of a good portion of the game and a lot of its new features, and the general consensus has been pretty positive.
Over the course of 45 minutes, a variety of Bethesda devs took to the screen to break down each of the game's core systems in quite a bit of detail, from Starfield's ship combat, to its character creator, to its ground combat, to its open-world, to its dialogue options, and just about everything else fans can expect to see in September. And while almost every one of these systems takes a classic Bethesda feature and improves on it, nowhere is that more true than Starfield's skill system.
How Starfield's Skill System Works
Upon starting up Starfield for the very first time, players will enter Bethesda's brand new, state-of-the-art character creator. After spending some time perfecting every single detail, players will then be prompted to give their character a background. These backgrounds will give the player's character a general base for their adventure, allowing NPCs to react in unique ways depending on what the character had been doing before the events of the game. For instance, if the player chooses the Beast Hunter background, they might be given unique quests later on in the game that task them with hunting down some alien wildlife.
But the most integral aspect of Starfield's backgrounds is that each one grants the player three skills to start with, all related to their chosen origin. After that, players will earn a new skill point once per level-up. There are a total of five skill trees in Starfield, each of which specializes in a certain field. These five skill trees are categorized as Physical, Social, Combat, Science, and Tech. Each skill tree has at least 15 separate skills, each of which grants the player a unique ability or trait, just like any other Bethesda RPG.
But what's different this time around is that each skill has a unique upgrade path. After unlocking one of Starfield's skills, players will then be able to access that skill's Rank system. This is essentially a linear upgrade path that lets players increase the effectiveness of the skill. For instance, the base version of the Intimidation skill will make enemy NPCs flee a battle if they are at a lower level than the player. But if the player has reached Rank 2 on the Intimidation tree, then a target NPC of up to 10 levels higher than the player will flee.
To level up one of Starfield's skills to the next Rank, players will need to complete a specific in-game challenge. For the aforementioned Intimidation skill, all players need to do is eliminate a certain number of enemies in Starfield's combat. For the Security skill, which allows players to attempt to hack advanced locks, players simply need to pick a certain number of locks to unlock its subsequent Ranks. Each of Starfield's skills has four individual Ranks, giving players a lot of challenges to complete, and a lot of rewards to strive for.
Starfield releases on September 6 for PC and Xbox Series X/S.