While Starfield may be heavily built on the foundations of Skyrim and Fallout 4, Bethesda’s new sci-fi RPG shows off some massive improvements over its predecessors. In recent footage of the game, eagle-eyed fans noticed that Starfield stealth gameplay is far more immersive than other Bethesda games.
As pointed out on the game’s subreddit, Starfield stealth is now real-time, meaning pickpockets will have to move with foes in order to stealth their stuff.
In the past, Bethesda games’ stealth systems have always been rather relaxed when it comes to pickpocketing. While the mechanic was a major feature in the studios’ RPGs, the way they accessed character’s inventories meant that the game would be actively paused while you ruffled through their pockets.
For Fallout and The Elder Scrolls, this could hinder the immersion of stealing from characters or filling someone’s pockets with trash or other items. For example, in The Elder Scrolls, you can poison an item, put it in someone’s inventory and then watch them perish.
In Starfield, this system finally seems to have the immersion that fans have been waiting for since Morrowind. While no one really complained about the original implementation of pickpocketing, fans are well up for the challenge of the new system. Will it end up in The Elder Scrolls 6?
However, real-time Starfield stealth systems do lead to one big question: how does planting items into an NPC’s inventory work? While stealing from a real-time menu seems easy, opening another menu to place items into a person’s pocket seems vastly more complicated.
Bethesda’s RPG is already capturing the imagination of the studio’s fans months from release. While Xbox executives like Phil Spencer play the game before release, fans of the title are already dreaming up Starfield mods, thinking about docking and more.
Starfield launches on Xbox Series consoles and PC on September 6th, 2023. The sci-fi RPG releases five days early for Deluxe Edition customers on September 1st.