Bethesda's Todd Howard compares Starfield's ending to underrated Tom Cruise movie

The following contains spoilers for Starfield and Edge of Tomorrow starring Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt.

Doug Limans Edge of Tomorrowstarring Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt, is often considered underrated, but not because people don't like it. In fact, the film has a 91% Tomatometer on Rotten Tomatoes and a 90% Popcornmeter, and given how increasingly rare it feels for critics and moviegoers to agree on a film's quality, that's saying something. But that was it Edge of Tomorrows initial weak reception that would lead many to consider it an underrated film, after it grossed just under $29 million in its opening weekend, significantly low for a $178 million blockbuster. Still, in the years following its theatrical release, it became one of the “best sci-fi movies you probably missed,” hence Todd Howard and Bethesda's decision to model the ending on Starfield after his own.

GameRant recently traveled to Rockville, Maryland to visit Bethesda HQ and get a taste Starfields Free Lanes update and Terran Armada DLC ahead of launch. While there, director and executive producer Todd Howard hosted a panel Q&A, where he answered questions about the sci-fi RPG, its future, and all things Bethesda. At one point during the discussion, Howard began to elaborate Starfieldends, directly compare it with Edge of Tomorrow and the feeling it leaves viewers with when the credits start rolling.

Bethesda and Todd Howard wanted Starfield's ending to feel like Edge of Tomorrow

New Game Plus is one of the most popular features in role-playing games that are meant to be played for a long time, as it gives players another opportunity to not only re-experience a game's story, but also to continue to grow their character and potentially make different choices during each subsequent playthrough. But Starfield's New Game Plus isn't as simple as rinse and repeat, as it drops players into a completely different universe with each playthrough, changing everything from dialogue to certain narrative events and even some of the most important characters in the game's world.

However, players are not forced to start a new game plus i Starfield if they don't want to, and they can instead choose to stay in their current universe. The reason they might want to is because stepping into the entity—an ethereal sphere at the center of the universe—means their relationships and even many of their belongings will be left behind in the process, and when they emerge on the other side in a whole new universe, the characters they once built something lasting with will have no memory of who they are. Commenting on the original intent behind it, Howard said it was meant to ask players a “weird deep question” beyond one's gameplay:

“The unit, that part of Starfield…it was really a way of asking yourself this weird deep question: “Are you this power player who just wants to have it all? Are you willing to leave this world behind? How do you feel about your own life choices? Would you leave it behind and start over?” So, some of that pain — we fix it — some of the pain of having to give up your stuff is going to make you feel bad.”

Howard of course had to add that Bethesda “fixed” New Game Plus with Starfields Free Lanes update, which allows players to bring a limited amount of their belongings to the next universe when they step into Unity. But “fixing it” might be a bit of a stretch, because while a certain amount of it is now fixed in the eyes of many players who have been requesting such a patch for quite some time, they still leave relationships they've built with some of Starfields most important NPCs – and in some cases these characters may not even exist in the next universe. Howard compared that sense of loss to the end of Edge of Tomorrow:

“Have you ever seen Edge of Tomorrow? It's like one of my favorites. I love it. They're doing another one, I guess. Is it true? Yeah, I don't know if they're fake posts or whatever. I'm like, it's real. But when he comes in and Emily Blunt looks at him, and you just remember that song rolls in. And then that song rolls in. the feeling that you have to leave everything you've done behind you, but as a player, you like, “I just walk through the magic gate and I get more power.”

The starting point for Edge of Tomorrow sees William Cage (Tom Cruise) caught in a time loop as he fights a war against aliens, with Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt) sacrificing herself each time to help Cage destroy Omega, the alien “brain”. Basically, every time he dies, the day resets, he keeps his memory, and he gets better at fighting – basically a roguelike game in movie format. However, he eventually loses his time loop ability, giving him one last chance to destroy Omega. As usual, Rita sacrifices herself, and with the time loop now over, Cage is unable to reset the day to save her.

However, when he is mortally wounded after destroying the Omega, he is covered in its blood, giving him the opportunity to restore the day one last time. When he wakes up, the war is suddenly over because all the aliens died when he destroyed Omega, but more importantly, Rita is alive. Even so, since Cage was the only one to ever retain his memory in every reset, when he approaches Rita, she has no memory of him. He then smiles, knowing everything that happened, and the credits roll. Of course, viewers would probably feel what Cage felt in that moment – that sense of loss, that despite everything Cage and Rita had been through, their relationship had effectively been restored.

But Bethesda still wanted to Starfield's New Game Plus to feel like there was still more to do, rather than just forcing players to repeat everything they'd already done, and that's even more true now with the “fixes” the game's Free Lanes update has implemented. As Howard said:

“So, this kind of legacy game loop, we have to make the world you're in feel like you have more to accomplish there. And then, if you decide to go into Unity, you can do it in a way where you can still carry on your character and have some of your stuff, but it's something that you've earned.”

Howard's comparison with Edge of Tomorrow ultimately lands because it accesses something Starfield is clearly trying to do more than just give players another loop to chase. It's not really about power or progression as much as it's about what players are willing to leave behind to continue. The last moment in Edge of Tomorrow works because Cage stands in a world that has been restored, even if he hasn't, and Starfield aims for the same kind of excitement when it asks players to step into Unity. They can keep pushing forward, but the question is whether it still feels like a continuation of their story or the beginning of something that no longer belongs to them.