According to a Former Developer, Starfield Missed a Huge Opportunity

Starfield was a highly ambitious project that Bethesda worked on for years and positioned as the studio’s new major brand. Despite reaching millions of players, it’s often said that it didn’t leave as strong an impact as Fallout and The Elder Scrolls. Former Bethesda developer Nate Purkeypile also believes the game isn’t bad, but could have been a much better experience.

Starfield Could Have Been Better with Fewer Planets

Purkeypile, who worked at Bethesda between 2007 and 2021, said the game should have focused on fewer, but entirely custom-designed worlds instead of the idea of ​​a thousand planets. According to the former developer, the decision to create a massive universe led to the constant repetition of quest areas and dungeons that the team could have prepared. He even explained that he encountered some locations he had seen before even during the main story.

Purkeypile points out that Starfield doesn’t actually produce procedural content in the truest sense. Planets are created from pre-built parts assembled in various ways, but the bases and enclosed areas encountered are pre-prepared by the developers. He therefore somewhat ironically calls the system “space quilts.” He believes that if thousands of planets were to be used, a more comprehensive system, similar to No Man’s Sky, that constantly generates new content was needed.

The former Bethesda employee states that he pointed out early in development that this approach could be problematic, citing the repetitive planets in the first Mass Effect game as an example. He believes that what makes Bethesda games special is the deliberate placement of structures on Earth and the unexpected details the player encounters during exploration. Seeing the same locations repeatedly inevitably weakens this sense of surprise.

Purkeypile also says that the areas surrounding large cities are often excessively empty, which makes the world less believable. He thinks that because the team’s time was spread across hundreds of planets, the main areas couldn’t be explored in sufficient depth. He doesn’t directly label the game as bad, but he clearly states that it’s not great. Starfield could have become one of Bethesda’s strongest exploration experiences if it had focused on a smaller, more meticulously crafted universe.

Read More: The Platinum Era Begins in the Xbox Achievement System