One of the reassuring things about Bethesda's Starfield Direct was the evidence that the gargantuan space epic still had time for a bit of whimsy and silliness, like one developer's personal quest to steal lots of space sandwiches. Over on the subreddit, the eagle-eyed ninjasaid13 has also spotted a neat easter egg in the ship's cockpit.
We get a good look at Starfield's customisable ships during the presentation, and around the 30-minute mark we get a close-up of one of the cockpit control panels. You can see switches and buttons for all the stuff you'd expect, from life support to the ship's umbilical, but alongside them is something more unexpected. A rage quit button.
It looks like the ship designers of the future are also gamers. We don't know what the button does, or if it's just set dressing or practical, but we can probably assume it's a self-destruct button. This raises questions about what happens when you activate it. If you're in the ship, you're going to be blown to smithereens, of course. But you can leave the ship, not just when you're on a planet, but when you're boarding other vessels. So it's not necessarily going to result in a game over screen.
- Starfield promises it still exists as silence drives fans to space-madness, but it mostly just annoys everyone: 'They are deliberately choosing not to communicate more'
- Bethesda intended Starfield to be more violent, including 'meat caps' for beheaded astronauts, but the gore was toned down for technical reasons and because it 'didn't fit thematically'
Also noticed was an RNG button, which has a less clear purpose. These might just be fun little easter eggs that don't actually do anything, but I'm still a big fan of these wee details.
The Starfield Direct obviously made a good impression, as Starfield shot to second place in Steam's global bestsellers list soon after. It's been knocked down to sixth place since then, but it's also worth noting that this list is based on revenue, and all the games above it are already out and, with the exception of Cyberpunk 2077, raking it in from microtransactions.
Pillars of Eternity is getting turn-based combat to mark its 10th anniversary, and that means PC Gamer editors will soon be arguing about combat mechanics again
Today's RPG fans are 'very sensitive to feeling like they wasted time' when they die, says Metaphor: ReFantazio battle planner—but Atlus still made combat hard anyway
