Starfield voice actor quashes "buggy launch" woes, promises "pretty awesome" game

The upcoming sci-fi role-playing game, Starfield is Bethesda's first new IP in over two decades.

As Bethesda announced recently, the title will not go forward with the much-coveted 11.11.22 release date. The new launch window allotted to Starfield is an indefinite date, sometime in mid-2023.

What makes it a stark highlight is that Bethesda Game Studios' offerings have previously not undergone release delays of this nature.

Moreover, nearing what is presumably the release candidate, there is still no gameplay showcase for Starfield in sight.

For most other AAA developers in the current industry climate, this would give a legitimate reason to fans to worry. They would not be amiss to have their reservations about the game's current level of polish.

Bethesda's reputation for buggy launches has earned them the long-standing moniker of 'Bugthesda.'

This narrative has seeped into the larger gaming pop culture, backed by an abundance of bugs in every single major BGS role-playing game. Adages like "It's not a bug, it's a feature" are abound.

Some fans are understandably becoming vocal about their growing cynicism at Bethesda's ability to sensibly manage their most prominent release for a while.

Stephen Ford, a voice actor/director theorized to be working on Starfield, is yet holding out hope for the game.

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How credible is the 'leak' about engine issues in Starfield?

A recent insider scoop from a BGS tester on the ResetEra public forums also casts some cynicism on the overall state of the game. The now-deleted post is the basis for questions spearheaded by cynical contingents within the fan community.

User 'Hevy008' is an ex-Bethesda employee whose credibility is verified by Jason Schrier, a journalist who has previously been on the money for numerous gaming leaks.

However, an employee to work so closely with such a vital milestone product ought to be under tight NDA clauses to keep information in wraps. This inconsistency led many to doubt the legitimacy of Heavy008's information.

Overall, the post drew a mixed picture, neither egging on the side of negativity about the game nor making any unprecedented appraisals. This verdict's vagueness was another reason for many to dismiss the leak as dubious and speculative at best.

Yet, Hevy008 did accurately hint toward a possible delay:

"In terms of it will ship in time, well they will try, that's for sure (...) finding the fun, and, of course, bug fixing is the big thing. It's a [catchy release date], though, and you only get one of those. Beta is out this summer, so that's when the picture will become clear."

This accuracy, of course, also calls into question what else the post was right about. To pin the reason for a delay on a need for further polish is a dot most will connect instinctively. After all, the game's massive scale and 'an overabundance of content' by default will give rise to the number of bugs in a release candidate.

The leak also decried the engine, but the nature of this comment is ambiguous. The superiority of Creation Engine 2 over previous iterations is a sensible assumption to make. Neither would the in-game footage look as good as it did with outdated versions of Bethesda's in-house engine, nor would Bethesda stake millions on it otherwise.

The likeliness, therefore, falls on the excess of bugs. Besides the aforementioned scale-related reason, this can also be traced to the engine's novelty and the developers' difficulty adapting to it.

This also implies that the developers will need more time to work out the kink, perfectly explaining the delay.