Bethesda has been talking quite a bit about Starfield (opens in new tab) in a recent chat (opens in new tab). In a Q&A with Community Director Jess Finster, Bethesda Softworks Executive Producer Todd Howard discussed the game's character trait system, including how players can choose to remove a trait if they grow tired of it. He shed some light on the subject.

Starfield's traits are very similar to those of Fallout: New Vegas. When creating a character, you are given three slots to fill from a list of traits such as "Introvert," "Empath," and "Neon Street Rat" (which is what I would choose.) Unlike Fallout's perks, traits are not straight upgrades, offering both advantages and disadvantages. The following is a list of characteristics that are not straight upgrades. For example, the introverted trait provides an endurance buff when alone, but a penalty when in the presence of companions.

It's the kind of thing you get sick of after a while, especially if you decide to change your character build in the middle of a game; Todd suggests that players either stick with the unwanted traits or rebuild a new character from scratch (or remove them using console commands or which is what he actually does). All traits in the game can be removed by special quests.

Reading the Q&A, it seems that each characteristic has a corresponding removal quest. According to Howard, "Each quest, when resolved, can remove the entire trait for the rest of the playthrough." Sounds like a lot of work, but the game just passed 250,000 lines of dialogue (open in new tab), so I guess it's kind of boneheaded to create 16 or so quests for each possible characteristic.

We'll get a chance to find out next year, as long as delays permit; Starfield was originally scheduled for release on November 11 of this year, 11 years after Skyrim, but has been pushed back to early 2023 (opens in new tab).