Bethesda steps in again to calm down hype around Starfield news next week, saying Todd Howard's EA College Football 26 skills are his 'only visionary power'

Starfield didn't quite land as the next big Bethesda game—I mean, it did about as well as you'd expect from any game from the studio, but critical and community response hasn't signposted the sort of longevity the developer might've come to expect from, say, Skyrim.

Last week, its composer Inon Zur said that despite this tepid landing, Starfield would become "legendary" and that people "were just not ready for it … this is a common thing for all the big visionaries.

"Sometimes people really don't understand them correctly, but they were strong enough to stay on-course, and Todd will stay on-course on Starfield. Starfield will eventually become something that will be legendary. I have no doubt. It's just a matter of time."

Mmn. Listen, I've played Starfield, and I cannot say I saw the seeds of greatness sown within—it was mostly, I felt, a somewhat clunky space RPG with kinda boring procgen elements and a deep misunderstanding of what makes science fiction compelling. But then again, maybe I'm just not seeing between the ones and zeroes.

Helping me feel less unenlightened, however, is the fact that Bethesda seems to be also hinting that Zur should hold his horses a little, replying directly to PC Gamer on X with the following: "We ran this by Todd and he said his only visionary power is seeing running lanes in EA College Football 26. He appreciates all the passionate feedback on Starfield and we’ll have more to share next week."

As to what that news could be? A Kinda Funny interview earlier this year suggests, from the mouth of Todd himself, that it'll be a lot of "updates and things that change the game, not in an isolated way, but sort of meta, using outer space and things in ways that we haven't." Space travel that isn't a loading screen? One can hope.

Anyway: To me, that seems like a cooling effect on Zur's words—and to give some credit to the guy, he does have a massive portfolio of work that might make me forgive him for getting all glossy-eyed and hopeful about a videogame I didn't like very much.

He's clearly worked hard on the game's soundtrack, which is far more impressive than I remember—clocking in at about five hours—and in an alternate universe where Starfield gripped me in the way that anyone at Bethesda intended, I could certainly see it gaining deeper acclaim.

Anyway, it's all in keeping with Howard's words on the game himself. The head honcho said back in February that the game's next update wasn't gonna be a 2.0 launch or anything: "[If] Starfield something that didn't connect with you right away, or you bounced off it or found it boring in places—I don't think this is going to change that fundamentally."