To celebrate Starfield going gold before its release, lead quest designer Will Shen participated in a Q&A where he shed some light on burning quests from fans.
One of these questions revolved around whether or not Starfield would support entirely non-lethal playthroughs – and the answer to that is… no. However, it is something that was strongly considered during early development.
“We talked about this very early on during pre-production, whether or not we would fully support a ‘non-lethal’ playthrough. We realised that, for various reasons, that wasn’t totally feasible.”
However, that doesn’t mean you need to take on the space-themed RPG as a homicidal maniac, as there will still be plenty of good non-lethal options for players to unitise in some situations.
“Those non-lethal options can be used in certain situations, honestly a lot of situations, though I couldn’t comfortably say you can complete the entire game without any killing whatsoever.
The Settled Systems is mostly civilised, but it can be a dangerous place if you’re going off the beaten path. And you’re absolutely going off the beaten path!”
One of these conflict resolution tactics will be the game’s speech challenge system, which should show up in most quests where important characters confront players.
If you’re interested in reading through the full Q&A, which has been reposted to the Starfield subreddit, you can follow the link here.
How are you planning on approaching your Starfield playthrough? Trying to talk it out or by killing anything, or anyone, who stands in your way? Let us know in the comments.