Todd Howard says Starfield's character traits 'are something you can solve' if you get tired of them

An image of Todd Howard in the middle of explaining a concept using hand gestures.
(Image credit: Bethesda)

Bethesda's been talking quite a bit about Starfield in its recent chats with, um, itself. In a Q&A with community director Jess Finster, Bethesda Softworks executive producer Todd Howard shed some light on the game's character trait system, including the ways that players can choose to remove those traits if they get tired of them.

Starfield's traits function a lot like the ones in Fallout: New Vegas. When you're making a character, you're given three slots that you can fill from a list of traits like "Introvert," "Empath," or "Neon Street Rat," (which is the one I'd pick). Unlike Fallout's perks, traits aren't straight upgrades, but offer both a benefit and a drawback. The introvert trait, for example, gives you an endurance buff when you're alone, but penalises it when you have companions.

They're the kind of thing you might sour on after a while, especially if you decide to change up your character build midway through a game. It looks like ol' Todd wants to avoid a situation where players have to choose between sticking with traits they don't want, or starting a new character from scratch (or using console commands to get rid of them, which is what you'd actually do). Every trait in the game can be removed with a special quest that deletes the trait—both its positives and negatives.

The Q&A makes it sound like each trait will have its own corresponding removal quest: Howard says that "each of them are something that you can solve that removes the entire trait for the rest of your playthrough". It sounds like a lot of work, but this is the game that just crossed a quarter of a million lines of dialogue, so I guess crafting 16-or-so quests for each possible trait is kind of a drop in the bucket.

We'll get a chance to find out next year, delays permitting. Starfield was originally slated to come out on November 11 this year, 11 years to the day after Skyrim, but was delayed to the first half of 2023

Joshua Wolens
News Writer

One of Josh's first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he's been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He'll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin's Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you're all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.

Read more
The creepiest guy leans in front of an NPC mid-conversation in Starfield.
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'
Starfield First Contact
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'
Will Shen headshot
Former Starfield lead quest designer says we're seeing a 'resurgence of short games' because people are 'becoming fatigued' with 100-hour monsters
Skyrim intro cinematic skill - Hey, you. You're finally awake.
A Skyrim dev broke the game before launch when they made thousands of tiny ants cast individual shadows: 'Why is the game running so slow?'
The director and executive producer at Bethesda Game Studios, Todd Howard, addresses the crowd about the new Fallout video game during the Bethesda E3 conference at LA Live in Los Angeles, California on June 10, 2018. - The three day E3 Game Conference begins on Tuesday June 12.
'I think geniuses come up with terrible ideas, too': Former senior artist at Bethesda likens Todd Howard's struggles with complete creative control to George Lucas
Starfield's companion robot giving a thumbs-up
Former Bethesda dev who quit Starfield to go solo says it's 'much less stressful as an indie' without daily meetings or 'office politics': it's 'very refreshing to just care about the game'
Latest in RPG
The heroes are attacked by monsters
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
Junah beginning a battle in Metaphor: ReFantazio.
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
Image of Cersei Lanniser from Game of Thrones: Kingsroad Steam early access trailer
A new Game of Thrones RPG is coming to Steam today with a cast of 'familiar faces,' which is good because it's really the only way to tell it's a GoT game at all
A Viera looking confused in Final Fantasy 14.
Old armor continues to fall victim to Final Fantasy 14's bizarre two-channel dye system, unless you're super into changing the colour of teeny-tiny eyelets: 'Why even bother at this point?'
Starfield: Shattered Space
By the time Bethesda was on Starfield, you'd 'basically get in trouble' for breaking schedule, says former dev: 'A lot of the great stuff within Skyrim came from having the freedom to do what you want'
Sphene applauds in Final Fantasy 14's patch 7.2 story.
I'm not yelling 'we're so back!' yet, but Final Fantasy 14's patch 7.2 story could be the first sign the MMO is returning to what made it so critically-acclaimed
Latest in News
A mech awakens.
Mecha Break developer is considering unlocking all mechs following open beta feedback
Lara Croft Unified Art
Tomb Raider developer Crystal Dynamics lays off 17 employees 'to better align our current business needs and the studio's future success'
A long bendy arm stealing money from people in a subway car
'You're a very long arm. You steal things. It's a comedy game,' explains developer of comedy game where you steal things with a very long arm
The heroes are attacked by monsters
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
Image of Ronaldo from Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves trailer
It doesn't really make sense that soccer star Ronaldo is now a Fatal Fury character, but if you follow the money you can see how it happened
Junah beginning a battle in Metaphor: ReFantazio.
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