The Starfield dialogue system lets you talk to, and influence, many of the characters you meet. It also features a persuasion element similar to the Oblivion system, where a minigame let you try to win people over. This is a separate, distinct part of the NPC interaction that you can opt into during regular dialogue, and then attempt to convince people to do or say something you need them to do.
We’ve tried to lay out everything we know here about Starfield dialogue system, and how the persuasion system works. So read on to learn how you can talk up a storm in space.
There’s a lot of Starfield dialogue
If you're more interested in the space parts of Starfield rather than all the talking, you'll want to learn more about Starfield ship customization
We know Starfield is big, with the main quest lasting approximately 30 to 40 hours – but Game Director Todd Howard revealed in a Q&A video that there are over 250,000 lines of dialogue, well over double the number of lines in Fallout 4, and more than quadruple the number in Skyrim!
Lead Quest Designer Will Shen says, in this ‘Into the Starfield’ episode on YouTube, that the designers didn’t want the dialogue system to be one “where there was definitely the right thing to say”. The resulting system has drawn inspiration from The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion (more on that below) and early glimpses indicate Starfield’s dialogue will be comparable to other Bethesda games as you try to pick options to win people over or glean more information.
How the Starfield dialogue system works
Todd Howard says the Starfield dialogue system is a more classic Bethesda-style set up – players are presented with a list of choices, while you can look at facial expressions to judge mood and responses to your attempts so far.
We've seen one clear example of it in action as well, with a player character speaking to an NPC. The options suggest it's a space pirate who has boarded the player’s ship to loot it, and results in these options:
- Persuade the NPC by saying there’s no treasure aboard [Persuade]
- Attack the NPC to try and defeat the whole crew [Attack]
- Agree to disagree.
Having the right Starfield skills might also really help you out during dialogue and persuasion attempts, so learn about those here!
If the player opts for the [Persuade] option the conversation switches to a turn-based persuasion minigame. Here, players have a limited pool of points to spend on responses over three turns to try and sway the NPC. You can spend your points on a list of color-coded responses worth varying amounts – green appears to indicate safe and cheap responses (+1 point), while red marks riskier and more expensive options (+5 points).
There's an obvious parallel here to Oblivion’s system, which used a spinning wheel to rotate the effectiveness of dialogue options like 'admire' or 'coerce' around, forcing you to try and match the highest point answer with the best facial expressions. As the options moved and depleted each time, and you weren't sure what face would appear next, there was a mixture of skill and luck to winning people over.
Like that old system there's definitely a risk and reward element to dialogue in Starfield again. The assumption so far is that the safer, lower-value responses around the +1 or +2 mark are less likely to actually persuade the NPC, but will move the turn on and save points for better arguments later. Conversely, going all-in on a conversation option worth +4 or +5 points early on might be enough to win the dialogue in some cases, but if it fails, you’ve probably spent most of your points on your opening argument.
This might mean there’s a surprising amount of strategy involved in Starfield’s dialogue system, but there’s no doubt that your character’s Starfield traits and their background will affect things – we did also notice an Auto-Persuade button featuring in the clip though, so you might be able to skip through your persuasion attempts.
