Of course Starfield has a lockpicking minigame

Starfield
(Image credit: Bethesda)

Starfield made its big gameplay debut at the Xbox and Bethesda Games Showcase today, and you shouldn't lose sight the most important between between the massive universe to explore and ship creation systems: there is a lockpicking minigame.

Yes, Bethesda made sure to show off that lockpicking minigame in the very first gameplay footage for Starfield. We see the player character attempt to open a locked weapon case, which requires the use of "digipicks" to open.

You rotate a set of those digipicks around a circle with pieces missing. Fill in those pieces with the appropriate picks until you've completed the circle, and you get access to the chest.

It looks a lot faster than the old Skyrim and Fallout lockpicking games, at least, though there is a familiar difficulty ranking for these locks - the one we see in the footage is rated as "novice."

You can see the lockpicking at the 5:03 mark in the video above.

Of course, the 15 minutes of footage showed far more than lockpicking minigames. We saw space pirates and a No Man's Sky-style scanner, we saw a broad overview of the game's robust character creator, and we heard the promise of 1,000 planets to explore, too.

Starfield still does not have an official release date beyond 2023, but we've recently seen hints that it will at least be early in the year.

Even without a real E3 2022, the E3 2022 schedule is still packed, so you can follow those links to stay current on everything that's happening throughout the weekend. Check out our Xbox and Bethesda Games Showcase live coverage for all of today's big announcements, too.

Dustin Bailey
Staff Writer

Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He's been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years. His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.

Read more
Star Wars Outlaws lockpicking explained
Star Wars Outlaws lockpicking and data spike explained
Starfield
Bethesda breaks silence as Starfield fans hope for an update: "We have a lot of exciting things planned for the game this year"
Starfield space combat, with a distant vessel exploding
Former Starfield dev says the space RPG "could have existed without those" surplus loading screens, with many added after he left production
Starfield
10 best games like Starfield to get swept up in when you're ready to leave Constellation
The Elder Scrolls 6 screenshot of the landscape show in the announcement teaser
Upcoming Bethesda games: every game currently in the works
The Big in 2025 image for Avowed, showing a montage of fighting and exploring with the RPG, including first-person combat with a skeleton, and Kai slashing enemies
Avowed is an RPG that's both the culmination of everything Obsidian has done before, and also an evolution of it: "There's really not a whole lot of our regions that's off limits to the players"
Latest in RPG
Horizon Forbidden West
Horizon Zero Dawn's Aloy is the star of Sony's leaked AI-powered character prototype, which allows users to ask questions to an unsettling, emotionless version of the protagonist
Atomfall screenshot
Fallout: New Vegas is a big inspiration for Atomfall, which is why you’ll be able to kill every NPC in post-apocalyptic Cumbria
Assassin's Creed Shadows cinematic screenshot
Assassin's Creed Shadows' transmog looks set to combine the best of Odyssey and Vahalla to make changing my drip easier than ever
Stardew Valley Baldur's Gate 3 mod Baldur's Village
Baldur's Gate 3 director Swen Vincke gives his official approval to the Stardew Valley mod that brings the D&D RPG to Pelican Town
The Witcher 3 lead says "not many games" were trying to match the RPG back in 2015, and that meant "there was a risk" to making it in the first place
The Blood of Dawnwalker
The Witcher 3 dev says his new vampire RPG Blood of Dawnwalker wants to challenge genre conventions, but only if "we're changing them to actually achieve some goal"
Latest in News
True Detective
Matthew McConaughey still thinks his own season of True Detective is the best one: "It was one of the great events in TV"
Diego Luna in Andor season 2
Andor season 2 showrunner Tony Gilroy calls Cassian “Star Wars Jesus” ahead of the show’s return on Disney Plus
Fortnite's Lara croft skin in front of a building
Fortnite has had Tomb Raider's Lara Croft locked away in battle pass exclusivity jail for almost 4 years, but she's reportedly getting a new skin very soon
Mind Rot card art (showing a human screaming in agony) with two meme Spongebob Squarepants Secret Lair cards laid over top
MTG's meme-filled Spongebob Secret Lair is enough to kill the average player from the 1990s
Julian McMahon as Doctor Doom in 2005's Fantastic Four
The Doctor Doom actor from 2005's Fantastic Four thinks Robert Downey Jr.'s take on the role in the next Avengers movies will be "pretty extraordinary": "I love watching his work"
My Hero Academia: Vigilantes trailer
My Hero Academia prequel series lands streaming date and brand new trailer, and it looks just as action packed as the original show