Starfield Previously Had More Punishing Environmental Damage on Planets

Ahead of the launch of Starfield, Bethesda chief Todd Howard said there were over 1,000 planets to explore in the science fiction role-playing game. "From barren but resource-heavy ice balls, to Goldilocks planets with life,” Howard said during the Xbox and Bethesda Games Showcase in June. “And not just this system, but over 100 systems — over 1,000 planets, all open for you to explore."

One of the main new systems that Bethesda Game Studios had to implement in Starfield was ship combat. Speaking with Insomniac Games CEO Ted Price in the latest episode of The AIAS Game Maker's Notebook Podcast, Game Director Todd Howard discussed the influences (FTL and early MechWarrior games) and revealed that the studio had to make the AI 'really stupid' to get ship combat to be fun for everyone.

Bethesda Game Studios’ Starfield launched last month and received praise from critics (check out our review) and players. However, with more than 1000 planets, extensive ship-building and several activities, the space-faring RPG’s journey is only beginning.

Bethesda boss Todd Howard says Starfield was designed and built for longevity, even more so than RPGs like Skyrim or any of the modern Fallouts, with the studio already considering how the game will evolve for years and years to come. 

If you land and go exploring on one of Starfield's many planets, you might become afflicted with a status effect. It won't bother you too much, though, and you can cure the effect with an item or a quick trip to a doctor.

It's not easy to balance space combat without seriously dumbing down the enemies, Todd Howard says.

Starfield director Todd Howard has revealed that exploring planets was originally a lot harder before Bethesda «nerfed the hell out of it.»

Starfield is the biggest Bethesda RPG to date, so of course features, mechanics, and ideas either got cut, reduced, or changed during development. This natural part of the development has been highlighted by Starfield director Todd Howard, who’s explained why a more in-depth planetary affliction system was cut down in favor of other mechanics.

Starfield's planets were originally supposed to be much more punishing for players, that is until Bethesda "nerfed the hell out of it," reveals Todd Howard.

Bethesda's latest video game release, , is an expansive science fiction RPG set in the year 2330. Although it features interesting storytelling, an outstanding soundtrack, as well as many other impressive gameplay mechanics, undoubtedly the most impressive (and occasionally most boring) feature of the game is the universe-sized map featuring over 1,000 unique planets spread across 100 star systems. Each planet has distinctive resources, weather, climates, flora, and fauna, making for a truly enormous experience.

Starfield is getting support for Nvidia DLSS in a future update. In a blog post, Bethesda claimed that it will address some of the highly-requested features and make quality-of-life improvements through a series of regular updates. These include an in-game FOV slider, which so far, players have been adjusting by editing a .ini text file, alongside brightness and contrast controls, and an HDR calibration menu. But before that, the developer has dropped a small hotfix today, to help iron out any ‘top blocker bugs' that are interfering with the general experience in the beloved space RPG. Dubbed version 1.7.29, the hotfix brings improvements to Starfield's performance on the Xbox Series S/X by reducing crashes. It also fixes some quest-ending bugs.

Starfield's jogging speed can appear to be a little fast but thankfully if you're finding it to be an issue a few players have already created some mods to help.