This is my predicted development timeline on Starfield. This is all speculation, so do not take a word of this as gospel.
Pre-2016
Starfield begins pre-pre-production, with Todd Howard and co. generating ideas over the years. Many are scrapped, many are kept.
2016:
Nuka World goes gold. The team at Bethesda Austin are hard at work modifying the Creation Engine to handle multiplayer, but BGS Maryland have some plans of their own. They begin to rebuild from the ground up the animation system, rendering, etc. and fix some of the core issues with the engine and bugs. Aspects beloved about Creation Engine and Gamebryo before it such as ease of modding, ease of procedural and hand-made generation and physics/interactivity are kept. A story session is held outlining the plot of the game, companions, etc.
2017:
With the team fixing up Creation, the world designers and writers have little to do, so they help out the team at BGS Austin with Fallout 76, contributing to the world design and writing for that game. Creation Engine continues its overhaul, with mechanics now starting to be determined.
2018:
The first playable (seen in the leaked screenshots), is finished. It showcases the mechanics and overhauls to the creation engine. The test environment is basic and procedurally generated. It is shown to the higher-ups at Zenimax, who are impressed. Starfield is announced officially at E3, mostly just to calm concerns that Bethesda who just mere months ago proclaimed “SAVE PLAYER ONE!” from the rooftops was still, in fact, making single player games.
Writing, world design and quest design begins. VOice actors are brought in to audition and start recording their first lines, as characters and NPCs are modeled. Starfield begins to enter a stage where the bones of the game are in place, but there is still work to be done. The mechanics have been decided upon, the story is in place, the main quests are written and the side quests begin, but they need to fully flesh out the world to compensate.
Bethesda Maryland continues their work, as Dallas and Montreal temporarily leave to help Austin on 76. Finally, Maryland takes what is supposed to be a month-long sabbatical to help Austin on 76, but when that game launches in a broken state to horrid reviews, they take extra time to help Austin with the roadmap and to fix up many of the bugs and glitches.
Microsoft enters negotiations to purchase Zenimax, but the deal falls through before any sort of public announcement.
2019:
By April, Fallout 76 is left in Austin’s care, and BGS Maryland returns to full production on Starfield. Work continues on writing, and the environments start to look like actually environments. Internally, a release date of Holiday 2020 is set, but nothing is set in stone, and BGS wants to take fuller advantage of next gen hardware.
In late 2019, a PS5 devkit arrives in the office, and they begin some work on the PS5 version, but PC is still the leading platform. The game is still tentatively set for a 2020 release, and things start to click into place.
2020:
Bethesda immediately encounters two major roadblocks: Covid, and Cyberpunk. Covid speaks for itself. Moving to work from home is difficult, and alternative ways to collaborate and ensure access to the necessary software/hardware need to be provided. Cyberpunk, massive competition for the game, is also delayed to September (and later November and December) which puts it right in Starfield’s territory. Both of these give Zenimax reason to greenlight a delay to Holiday 2021.
However, Zenimax itself has fallen on some difficult times, with some recent underperformance and costly delays (both Wastelanders and Doom Eternal were bumped out of Holiday). They sold off Deathloop and Ghostwire to Sony for a year, and it has reached the point where they are shopping around Starfield. Work on the console version is pulled to a halt, as Sony begins to bid up Starfield, capturing the attention of insiders like Imran Khan and Rand al Thor 19. Microsoft is offered Starfield as a moneyhat, but they decline, because they want more than just Starfield. They re-enter negotiations to purchase Zenimax, and both parties agree to the terms of 7.5 billion dollars. The deal is set to close between January and June of next year.
That brings us to where we are now. Starfield is likely in the finishing stages for the content of the game (Bethesda games have long polishing cycles) and the teams at Dallas and Montreal have left 76 to help with everything from asset creation to bug removal. Work on the Xbox version has resumed, and they may be looking at adding next gen features like raytracing. Internally, the game is still set for Holiday 2021, but with Halo there, they may move it up/back. Teams like Obsidian and InXile can, in a pinch, help with the game like Turn10 did on Halo, and MS can fund additional outside work if they really want it over the finish line.
This is my predicted timeline, but for all I know, I am like 75% wrong (because at least 25% is based on stuff Todd has said and we know), and the game is 2022 (shouldn’t be later I wouldn’t think, knock on wood).
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