Todd Howard Says Planet Exploration in Starfield Was Brutal Before Being 'Nerfed'

26.09.2023 - 15:39 / ign.com / Ted Price / Howard / Howard Says

If you are bummed that planet exploration in Starfield is not as challenging as expected, Bethesda originally planned to make the system much more punitive, according to the game's director.

In a recent interview on the Game Maker's Notebook Podcast, Howard and Insomniac Games Founder Ted Price dissected the development of Starfield. When discussing cut content for Starfield, Howard explained how punishing planet exploration was before fine-tuning it to make it streamlined.

"So the way the environmental damage works in the game, on planets, and your suit, you have resistances to certain types of atmosphere effects, whether that's radiation or thermal, etc., and that was a pretty complex system - actually, it was very punitive," Howard said on the podcast. "... And what we did at the end of the day, and it was a complicated system for players to understand, is we just nerfed the hell out of it. It matters only a little bit. It matters more in flavor. The affliction you get is more annoying knowing you have it."

Howard's tidbit on "afflictions" refers to a status effect a player can incur in the game and occurs when a player gets injured when performing certain actions, such as spraining your ankle after falling from a great height, getting lung damage from breathing toxic gas, or getting frostbite when being on a cold planet for an extended period.

Howard also explained how one solution the dev team explored was offering players the option to have multiple spacesuits, each one would be equipped depending on what type of extreme condition the planet had, if any at all. "We originally wanted where, okay, I have multiple spacesuits. I have one for high-radiation planets, I have one for really cold planets, I have ones for these environments," Howard said. "And I'm saying it now: people play the game, you don't think about it that much. Might be something we address going forward, but that was one type of solution there."

Howard's comment that Bethesda may address it "going forward" implies Starfield may receive a Hardcore or Survival mode-type difficulty level in the game. It would not be the first time Bethesda added a difficulty mode to one of its games post-release, as Fallout 4 received a Survival Mode a few months after launch. This added a set of features not found in the other difficulty levels, such as eliminating the option to autosave or save manually from the pause menu or stronger enemies spawning more frequently. Should such a mode be added to Starfield, the team could bring back the more punitive system for planet exploration.

In either case, Starfield has been a big hit for Bethesda, hitting 10 million players to become the biggest launch in the studio's history. Check out our Starfield