What's new have a Starfield persuasion system? It was first talked about in March 2022, when players were very briefly introduced to a completely new dialogue mini-game in the space game. Starfield game director Todd Howard said of it that "it's like having a conversation where you're really trying to convince someone of something."
After that, not much has been said about this intriguing new way to communicate with NPCs in this RPG. Luckily, Todd has since expanded on Starfield's persuasion system, giving fans a first look at how it will work, what it will cost you, and what the mechanics of persuading characters in the game to join your way of thinking are. Let's get a look.
What is the Starfield Persuasion System?
After a brief explanation from Todd Howard at the Developer Roundtable, fans have been waiting for more information about the persuasion system in Starfield. An October 2022 Q&A video with Todd himself went into more detail about the new dialogue for the first time.
Essentially, Starfield as a whole is aiming to return to more "classic Bethesda-style dialogue." He added that "the scale of the game, the amount of content we're doing is a little bit more than we've done before in terms of quests and things like that, but the depth of some of the dialogue stuff, we just passed the 250 line mark."
Compared to some of Bethesda's biggest games to date, Skyrim only had 60 lines and Fallout had 000. So we're talking about more than double the line count of previous Bethesda games.
The belief system, according to Todd Howard, is his “favorite.” He continues, “It feels like part of the dialogue, but you're spending points to convince them... It feels natural, not like I've entered some other mode where I'm not having normal dialogue. I’m in this mode of convincing you to get what I want.”
In several screens of the first gameplay, we can see for the first time what the persuasion system will look like. As shown above, players will have the option to select a [Persuade] NPC during their dialogue. When choosing a persuasion option, the player will be presented with a list of options, each of which will have a different number of points that must be spent to participate in the dialogue.
By spending points, players get a chance to win a character. As shown in the first gameplay, one point can be spent to tell the character that they are wrong, three points to suggest a ship trade, four points to sway them to shame, and five points to seem to suggest conflict. With over 250 lines in the game, players can expect a lot of different dialogue options overall, not to mention the new persuasion system.
That's about all we know about the persuasion system so far, but we'll learn a lot more as we get closer to Starfield's release date. However, we still have a lot to learn about the upcoming Titan space RPG, so be sure to check out our latest news on Starfield release date Game Pass.
