Starfield fan spends around 200 hours trying to piece together its skill system

Starfield isn’t that far off now, with a release date of September 6, 2023. But that’s still a ways off, and at least one eager fan is spending the time by trying to sleuth out of all of the Starfield skill system.

In a post on the r/Starfield subreddit (as spotted by GamesRadar), user u/asd8dhd has posted their deductions from “around 200 hours” of reverse engineering. Alongside a 44-page Google Doc, they also shared a massive library of suspected skill images, collected from all the information and footage the public has seen so far.

It is, to put it frankly, exhaustive. Even though u/asd8dhd acknowledges there are some misses—and asks for readers to point out anything provably incorrect—it’s an impressively in-depth investigation.

Given the amount of publicly available footage to trawl through and identify, it’s commendable. And now I’m certainly invested in seeing whether u/asd8dhd’s educated assessments pan out. They include not only skill names and descriptions, but a short explanation of how the actual leveling and skill system works.

The skills they surmise are in the game range all over the place, from boosts for yourself or companions to special skills, like instigating an NPC to attack their allies or slowing down time. It’s largely theoretical, to be clear. Still, it’s a lot of info to trawl through, and Starfield fans still have time between now and launch to do just that.

Skill check

It’ll be a good few weeks before we know whether this Starfield sleuth hit it on the head or not. In the meantime, though, August looks to be starting off a stacked fall season with a bang.

In fact, Starfield seems to have led to a bit of a summer launch shuffle. Baldur’s Gate 3 bumped up the launch date of its PC version, and role-playing musical Stray Gods was delayed a week later in additional response. Those two, plus Armored Core VI and several other intriguing games, could make for a stacked start to the second half of the year.

Eric Van Allen

Senior Editor – While Eric’s been writing about games since 2014, he’s been playing them for a lot longer. Usually found grinding RPG battles, digging into an indie gem, or hanging out around the Limsa Aethryte.

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