Decide Who You Will Become
On this page
Starfield’s character system is framed as a story rather than a stat sheet: the store says the most important story is the one you tell with your character.
Appearance, Background, Traits
You begin by customizing your appearance and deciding your Background and Traits. Those three decisions are the ones the store names first, which makes them the foundation of the run rather than a long list of numbers to push around before the game proper has even started.
The examples are deliberately different
The store offers four pictures of who you might be: an experienced explorer, a charming diplomat, a stealthy cyber runner, or something else entirely. Reading that list as a set of playstyles is more useful than hunting for the strongest option, because the page then hands the choice straight back to you.
Decide who you will become
That phrase is the store’s own summary of the character system, and it sets an expectation the rest of the game has to meet. In a game with more than a thousand planets, knowing who your character is before you start is the one thing that keeps an open galaxy from turning into a list of errands.
Where that character goes is covered in exploring a thousand planets. What you do it from is covered in building the ship and the outposts.