‘The more you give it, the more it’s gonna give back’: Bethesda’s Starfield explored

Be warned: you will be sucked in to the cosmic new worlds, its Nasa punk' aesthetic and the rich narrative details Bethesda always adds

It's the game Bethesda has been thinking about and dreamily planning for 25 years: a massive role-playing adventure, set not just on one world like the multimillion- selling Fallout and Skyrim titles, but across an entire galaxy of more than 1,000 detailed planets. In a 40-minute video presentation given as part of Sunday's Xbox Showcase in LA, the development team working under director Todd Howard spelt out its wildly ambitious project in detail - so, so much detail.

You play as a member of the Constellation, a famed group of space explorers who have stumbled across a strange artefact that hints at an ancient alien intelligence, or perhaps even god. That's the main quest-line, but players can also discover myriad side quests and mini-missions handed out by a vast number of non-player characters. The game starts in the sprawling utopian city of New Atlantis on Alpha Centauri, but as play progresses, you move farther away from the peaceful United Colonies, and into the territory of the Independent Coalition of Star Systems, a ragtag frontier of cyberpunk worlds. Outside those lies uncharted space, teeming with hostile factions.