A former Bethesda developer who served as Skyrim's lead designer predicts The Elder Scrolls 6's full reveal will mirror Fallout 4's, in the sense that we probably won't hear much else about the RPG until about six months before launch.
Only a month after Starfield’s release, someone has already surveyed every planet in its universe
09.10.2023 - 21:09 / rockpapershotgun.com / Todd Howard
Starfield has only been out a month, and someone has already been to every planet in its universe. While Todd Howard said we’d be able to visit over 1,000 planets, the Bethesda dev actually undersold the sheer scale of Starfield’s galaxy - there are actually close to 1,700 planets, and now someone’s seen them all just weeks after launch.
That person is Reddit user DoomZero, who revealed their achievement by posting a screenshot of Starfield’s menu showing 1,694 planets fully surveyed, with 1,695 scanned - some planets were apparently impossible to survey due to bugs.
Despite the huge number of planets in Starfield, DoomZero’s playtime feels surprisingly small given the work involved in surveying some planets, which require not only entering orbit but scanning specific creatures, plants or resources. (Apparently finding aquatic creatures was the most difficult bit, DoomZero told IGN.)
That took around 180 hours in total, on top of 20 hours spent doing other things in the game - meaning that they needed to play an average of six and a half hours a day, seven days a week, to survey everything so quickly.
That’s a lot of time in a fairly short period, but it also feels quite fast for crossing the entire galaxy - by my maths, it means each planet only needed six minutes to be fully surveyed on average. Having said that, some gas planets can be surveyed simply by flying close enough, so that’s likely to have brought the average down a bit. DoomZero acknowledged that Howard’s statement that only 10% of the game's planets have life on them is likely accurate, with most being moons and gas giants with resources due to the different planet traits in Starfield.
Another detail is that surveying the entire galaxy took DoomZero’s character to level 130, having started on their completionist quest after finishing only a couple of the early main missions and side quests.
Bethesda devs previously said that some of Starfield’s planets are far more empty (but not “boring”) by design, to help the player better appreciate their place in its “overwhelming” cosmos. In DoomZero’s case, at least, that seems to have paid off.
“When you get out into the galaxy and start exploring everything does feel vast and overwhelming,” they said, “Some of my favourite places that I surveyed were moons that may have only had a couple of resources on them, but they were extremely close in proximity to large planets and the entire landscape is just a visual of that planet on the horizon.”
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