E3 2021: First look at Starfield and The Outer Worlds 2

A confirmation and a "surprise" was provided by the Microsoft Showcase at E3 2021. Specifically, on the one hand, a leak that had been leaked early on was confirmed, according to which we were going to see the first trailer for the infamous Starfield, Bethesda's space RPG. On the other hand, a bit of a surprise (although there was still speculation that it was already in development) an... let's say interesting announcement trailer for The Outer Worlds 2 from Obsidian.

Starting with Starfield, the truth is that the trailer probably doesn't show us much. The only substantial information we get is that the game... will be set in space (shocker!), and that it will implement an upgraded version of Bethesda's eternal graphics engine, called Creation 2. Details on exactly what upgrades the 2nd version introduces compared to the original Creation, we'll probably have to wait to see in another, future trailer. Finally, we also learn the game's release date: 11/11/22. Which will mean that Starfield will be released almost a decade after its original conception, as Bethesda is known to have started pre-production on the title at least in 2013, maybe even a little earlier. There's certainly some interesting background to the ten-year development cycle, which will inevitably come to the surface.

Moving on to The Outer Worlds 2, the information we get is even less. In fact, the only thing we learn is that... the game is officially in development, even though it's only been a year and a half since the release of the first The Outer Worlds (and a few months since the release of the latest DLC for it). Other than that, most of the trailer consists of a meta-narrative that ironically pokes fun at various clichés of gaming trailers from across the world. As naturally ironic people we should applaud this practice (Irony of the World, Unite), but the truth is that we would have expected at least a little more cheese. It remains a mystery as to whether Outer Worlds 2 will be released before or after the Avowed that Obsidian announced last year with no other information of any kind leaked about it since then.