It's no secret that Starfield — out now on PC and Xbox Series S/X — is hands down one of the most monumental game launches of the year. For Bethesda, it's a gamble in uncharted territory as they undertake their first new universe in 25 years, set across the stars in a futuristic civilised corner of the Milky Way galaxy. For publisher Xbox, it's an opportunity to bounce back from a lacklustre 2022 slate and dominate the gaming conversation for a long time — probably years, given the staying power director Todd Howard's RPGs are notorious for. With over a thousand planets to explore, dashing factions to align with, and cosmic mysteries bubbling with political intrigue, Starfield aims to be the most complex spacefaring adventure of our generation. As such, it soars gracefully, but not without some turbulence.
Bethesda says most of Starfield's 1000+ planets are dull on purpose because 'When the astronauts went to the moon, there was nothing there' but 'they certainly weren't bored'
05.09.2023 - 12:25 / pcgamer.com / Todd Howard
Space is big and, for the most part, kind of dull. The heady thrill of setting foot on planets no human has ever seen aside, most of the celestial bodies in our universe are just big, complicated rocks when you get right down to it. For better or worse, that's a part of reality that Starfield deliberately tries to capture, according to a recent NYT interview (via VG247) with Ashley Cheng, Bethesda's managing director, and Todd Howard, who is Todd Howard.
«The point of the vastness of space is you should feel small,» Cheng told the NYT, «It should feel overwhelming.» Addressing fans' worries that Starfield's 1000 planets «are going to be boring,» Cheng pointed out that not every planet «is supposed to be Disney World… When the astronauts went to the moon, there was nothing there. They certainly weren't bored.»
So Starfield's many globes are meant to be sparse because, hey, the vast majority of planets out there are sparse too. But the sparsity is compensated for—or meant to be compensated for—by the wonder of exploration. The sheer thrill of stepping onto a planet previously untouched by humanity should more than make up for the lack of, well, much of anything else going on.
That sentiment was echoed by Howard. «All of us, I think, at some point look to the sky and say, ‘Man, I wonder what it would be like to blast off and land on the moon?’» Howard told the NYT, remarking that «We needed the scale [of Starfield] to have that feeling. We could have made a game where there are four cities and four planets. But that would not have the same feeling of being this explorer.»
It's a noble goal, and I share Bethesda's fascination with the vast expanse and mystery of space, but I'm not entirely sure Starfield makes good on it. I'm only 18(ish) hours in myself, and most of my wandering has been confined to level-appropriate planets around the game's main hubs, but if anything my experience so far is that Starfield's planets don't quite feel as unexplored as they ought to.
As someone who continues to derive a frankly bizarre amount of joy from jetting to random, uninhabited parts of the galaxy in Elite: Dangerous and wandering around in awe on the barren planets generated by that game's Stellar Forge tech, Starfield's planets have, to me, felt more like little, independent slices of any other Bethesda game that I now have to fast travel rather than walk between. I'm hoping that will change as I get further into the game, but right now? Starfield's planets aren't boring enough.
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Bethesda Considered Making Starfield A Fallout Sequel
Earth is an inhospitable wasteland in Starfield. Sounds familiar, aye? Nuclear war ravaged our little floating rock in the Fallout series, leaving much of the planet a smoking radioactive desert. However, the two games aren't connected, but Bethesda did consider setting Starfield in the Fallout universe at one point during development.
Latest Nvidia driver improves Starfield performance for PCs with Resizable BAR
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This Starfield mod will let you jog slower if you want that
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Bethesda are adding official support for Starfield mods in 2024, Bethesda Games Studios top banana Todd Howard has told Famitsu in a Japanese language interview. People are already modding Starfield, of course - the options range from "Potato Mode" functionality for lower-spec computers, through somewhat controversial Starfield DLSS mods, to the all-important Starfield script extender, which lets other modders add "scripting capabilities and functionality" to the game. But Bethesda have yet to release proper in-house tools, aka Creation Kit 2.
Todd Howard mentions that the official Starfield mod tools are coming in 2024, with the DLC's release still TBA
In an interview with Famitsu, Starfield lead and Bethesda frontman Todd Howard stated that the game's mod support «will be available next year» (obtained via machine translation), which likely refers to Starfield's equivalent to the Creation Kit modding tools for Skyrim and Fallout 4.
Starfield Players Have Made Some Weird and Wonderful Mods
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Starfield's lack of ground vehicles is a deliberate choice, Bethesda says
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Asked about Starfield ground vehicles, Todd Howard points out that there are spaceships and jetpacks in the game
Opinions on Starfield are all over the place, but two criticisms are pretty widely shared: One, the maps aren't very good, and two, it's a bit disappointing that there aren't any ground vehicles to explore planets with.
Starfield Players Using Character Creation to Recreate Famous Faces
Starfield players are a creative bunch, and when they're not filling spaceships full of potatoes or building New Atlantis in Lego, they're using the robust character creator to recreate a bunch of famous faces.
Starfield's planets aren't all "supposed to be Disney World" says Bethesda
Bethesda has said that Starfield's planets aren't all designed to be like «Disney Land» and that some were specifically made to be barren.