Bethesda is Serious About Religion in Starfield; Team Consulted a Jesuit
Religion will be one of the most important elements in the upcoming Starfield. The game's lead designer confessed that the help of a former screenwriter, a Jesuit who is currently training to be a priest, was enlisted.
Retrofuturistic universe of Starfield will not be limited to competing political parties. Bethesda's screenwriters paid attention even to such aspects of society as religion, divided into many factions - the developers' diligence can be seen in the fact that the work on two of them was assisted by the former screenwriter of Fallout 4 and Skyrim, a Jesuit who is currently training to be a priest.
Religion in Starfield
Recently an interview with the lead designer of Starfield, Emil Pagliarulo, has been published on Polygon. One of the topics was the role of religion in inspiring people to interstellar travel and the process of designing religion in the game itself. He also mentioned that they enlisted the help of Shane Liesegang, a former Bethesda employee who is now training to become a Jesuit.
Liesegang helped specifically with the creation of the principles of the Church of Sanctum Universum, but also collaborated in the creation of the group called The Enlightened.
"(...) We had Shane Liesegang, who was one of our screenwriters (for Skyrim and Fallout 4). He is currently studying to become a priest. We asked him directly: if we were to make this religion credible, what must we do? How should we write it? And he advised us, wrote a bit for us, developed Sanctum Universum, so this process was really based on credible information," Pagliarulo said.
Let's point out that in Starfield there will be at least three sizable religions:
- Sanctum Universum, which believes that the ability to travel through space is proof of the existence of a god;
- The Enlightened, which believes there is nothing divine about space exploration, instead focusing on the ideas of humanism;
- The Great Serpent - is by far the most mysterious religion, its adherents centered around the Va'runn Family.
Pagliarulo further noted that the creators did not want to emphasize that any of the above religions is the right one. He noted that the story is "open to interpretation."
Early access to Starfield will launch soon
Recall that players will be able to start their adventure in space as early as September 1. This applies to all those who bought the premium version of the game. The rest of us have to wait until September 6 - when the game will have its official launch.
According to stats collected by PlayTracker, on Steam alone, Bethesda's game has already been preordered by more than 365 thousand users, so the hype is considerable. What's more, the game is also expected to be the least buggy of all Bethesda's launches, according to the head of Xbox Game Studios himself, Matt Booty.
