Starfield’s religions are going to be an interesting wrinkle in the spacefaring RPG, and Bethesda used a Skyrim writer who‘s a priest-in-training to help ground them.
Starfield is undoubtedly going to be an enormous game. The title promises a whole universe for players to jump into, and with that, a massive canvas to create your character on. From there it will be down to you to decide what to do out in the universe.
That blank slate will leave you with a lot of choices to make. Included in those choices are the four religions in the game. It will be up to you when it comes to how to navigate these, and whether you commit yourself to any of them.
With the “NASA-Punk” aesthetic Bethesda has been trying to garner around Starfield, Religion might seem an odd inclusion in the game. However, the developers are convinced it adds to their universe and the story they’re telling. That’s why they’ve tried to imbue it with as much authenticity as they could.
Bethesda got a priest to consult on their Starfield religions
In an interview with Polygon, Starfield lead designer Emil Pagliarulo explained that the team went to a very specific source to make sure the religions worked. Shane Liesegang worked on Skyrim and Fallout 4 as a writer, but has since left games to become a priest. Bethesda went to him to get the religions right.
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Pagluarulo said, “[Religion] was a way to talk about these big concepts but not dive too far down the rabbit hole — you don’t want to offend people.”
“We actually had Shane Liesegang, who was one of our writers [on Skyrim and Fallout 4]… He’s now studying to be a Jesuit priest. We talked to him about if we were to make this real, this religion, what would we do? How would we write it? And so he advised us and did some writing for us. He wrote for the Sanctum Universum, and it really grounded it in the believable.”
Religion can always be a tricky subject, as it’s a personal topic for each person. Still, it can also fill out massive RPGs like this with tangible history. Hopefully, they bring something new and interesting to a playthrough.
