Bethesda has been talking a lot about Starfield (opens in new tab) in his recent chats with, um, itself (opens in new tab). In a Q&A with community director Jess Finster, Bethesda Softworks executive producer Todd Howard shed some light on the game's character trait system, including the ways players can choose to remove those traits if they grow tired of them.

Starfield’s traits work a lot like those in Fallout: New Vegas. When you’re making a character, you’re given three slots that you can fill from a list of traits like “Introvert,” “Empath,” or “Neon Street Rat” (which is what I’d go for). Unlike Fallout’s perks, traits aren’t direct upgrades, but instead offer a benefit and a drawback. The Introvert trait, for example, gives you a resistance bonus when you’re alone, but penalizes you when you have companions.

They’re the kind of thing that can get sour after a while, especially if you decide to change your character build in the middle of a game. It seems like ol’ Todd wants to avoid a situation where players have to choose between sticking with traits they don’t want or starting a new character from scratch (or using console commands to get rid of them, which is what you’d actually do). Every trait in the game can be removed with a special quest that removes the trait—both its positives and negatives.

The Q&A makes it sound like each trait will have its own corresponding removal mission: Howard says that “each one of them is something you can resolve that removes the entire trait for the rest of your playthrough.” It sounds like a lot of work, but this is the game that just went through a quarter of a million lines of dialogue. (opens in new tab)so I think creating about 16 quests for every possible feature is kind of a drop in the bucket.

We'll have a chance to find out next year, delays permitting. Starfield was originally scheduled to come out on November 11th this year, 11 years after Skyrim, but has been delayed to the first half of 2023. (opens in new tab).