The game isn't even out and I've already wandered away from the main quest.
After a year of mining screenshots and details from last summer’s Starfield gameplay reveal, we finally have a motherlode of new footage to pore over while we wait for that September 6 launch date to roll around. Of course, we’ve already highlighted plenty of the major gameplay elements we learned about Starfield from the presentation, but now that the space dust has settled it’s time to really dig really deep. I’ve scoured the Direct for the nerdiest stuff you might have missed on your first (or 40th) watch. We’re talking specific sandwich recipes, perk minutia, and the hunt for some guy’s mysterious beans.
I spent longer than I care to admit going through frame-by-frame—nominally to sift out new details about Starfield factions and what we know about Starfield cities—but in reality just getting distracted by sticky notes and environmental clues. My respect to whoever spotted the “rage quit” cockpit button. They get it. And isn’t that the true spirit of a Bethesda RPG? Just three days after Starfield Direct I’ve fully abandoned the plot and gone off to obsessively collect secrets and goodies.
Here are seven stupidly specific things I noticed in the Starfield Direct:
Someone on your crew has terrible taste in sandwiches
Seen at 5:37 (Image credit: Bethesda)
In what appears to be your ship kitchenette there is a hastily scrawled sticky note detailing the recipe for “THE sandwich” which so far as I can tell is a sandwich for people whose tastebuds got spaced. Here’s the recipe:
White breadLettuceCheeseMulti meatMissing? Chunks
Thanks to the excessive sandwich collecting of one Starfield Developer, we can see “multi meat” appears similar to salami. Look, I’m extremely pro salamwich. It’s a great cold cut and space, I’ve heard, is cold. But unspecified cheese? Plain white bread? That sandwich is missing more than “chunks.” It needs some chipotle mayo or dijon mustard. It deserves a second kind of meat and a specific cheese vision—gouda for me, please. It should be toasted. Surely someone packed a sourdough starter?
I’ve taken real personal issue with the implied superlative sandwich which by my reckoning was constructed from the bottom of the cabinet with no peer review. I need to know which of my Starfield companions is responsible so I can send them home.
One of your crewmates may be Freestar famous
Seen at 10:37 (Image credit: Bethesda)
If you spent as much time frame-hunting through last year’s reveal as I did, you’ll have already noted that the Freestar Collective faction’s main Akila City was founded back in 2167 (163 years prior to the events of Starfield) by one Solomon Coe. No surprise then that there’s a Coe Plaza named for him that you can spot in the brief city walkthrough. But hold up, that’s also the last name of our crew member Sam Coe.
We don’t know anything about Sam yet except that he’s got negative game (also I’m convicting him of the sandwich crime until proven otherwise), but it sure sounds like he might be better connected to the Collective than your average space cowboy. He’ll probably tell you all this like two minutes after meeting him and all my speculation will be for naught. But let it be known I noticed.
This mop bot is going to be my favorite pet
Seen at 37:33 (Image credit: Bethesda)
Look at this guy. Look at this good little dude. Moppin-bot is a chunky, autonomous hoover for your planetary outpost. I bet he’s a craftable pal in the building system. You can also spot one scooting around the city Neon. But do they talk?
Starfield may have thermal scopes
Seen at 39:20 (Image credit: Bethesda)
This is actually a nice detail concerning combat that shows up very briefly. Starfield appears to have some thermal scope attachments for guns, which Fallout 4 did not. Bethesda emphasized all the work it’s done on improving gunplay and customization with attachments for Starfield. Interestingly, you can also see this thermal highlight on an enemy at 39:45 while not in scope view, so it’s possible this is tied to a perk or trait. Thermal attachments are definitely a win for us sneaky snipers who need some help picking out targets against fields of brown rocks.
Your parents got their allowance slashed
Seen at 14:57 (Image credit: Bethesda)
If you go back and check the tape from the Starfield gameplay reveal 2022 you’ll notice that the Kid Stuff perk available during character creation lets you visit your parents and automatically sends 10% of your space bucks home to them. As of the Starfield Direct, that family contribution has been slashed to 2%. In your face mom and dad! It’s no surprise that an additional year of development has resulted in some perk nerfs but damn I didn’t expect your filial obligations to be one of them.
Beans?
Seen at 14:42 (Image credit: Bethesda)
Oh hey, trait-specific dialogue choices in Starfield are looking decent. This guy needs a professional beast hunter to track down a baddie. But more importantly… to bring back his beans?
Hopefully you can catch more than a cold
Seen at 35:33 (Image credit: Bethesda)
Seen for just a quick second, your helpful HUD compass briefly flashes “cough” which, no, is not a planet nor an imperative demand. We’ve heard quite little about the survival elements of Starfield but I’d bet this is a status effect earned in cold climates.
Going all the way to space to get the common cold would be a bummer though, so here’s hoping there are way weirder space diseases out there. Fallout 4 mostly had normal-sounding afflictions and additions but Bethesda did get properly weird with things in Fallout 76 where you can catch a case of, among many other things, “flap limb.”
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