When it comes to the vast open world of Starfield, you don’t have to be afraid of being isolated in this vast universe. In fact, the loneliness you might experience while navigating from one desolate world to another is exactly what ringtone developer Bethesda is all about.
Instead of focusing on the horror of lonely space travel, Bethesda wants to highlight its starfield awesomeness. During a recent interview with Lex Friedman (Opens in a new tab)Game director Todd Howard explained how the team at Bethesda embraced the “beautiful ruin” of Starfield’s massive open world.
From what Official gameplay trailer (Opens in a new tab) He showed us that there would be “more than 100 systems” with “more than 1,000 planets” in the Starfield. This means that the intergalactic explorer is set to be 20% larger than Fallout 4 or Skyrim. While this sounds amazing, is there too much game? Given that Starfield is slated to be a single-player game, millions of planets seem to work on their own for just one person.
The final frontier
Loneliness isn’t the only problem developers faced when creating Starfield. It is not easy to develop such a vast universe; Hence there was a decision to be made. Howard explained during the interview that either “you can’t land on all the planets that you see,” or the universe you’re exploring is “a very controlled little global space.”
Howard said it was determined the latter might have set “the wrong tone”. Instead of focusing on limitations, the development team chose instead to look for ways “we can say yes”. The best way to overcome the complications of creating an expansive, playable, detailed open world was to focus on creating it tile by tile. By taking these small squares of landscape offline, the development team was able to craft a patchwork of complex ecosystems that could be woven into the Starfield universe.
These squares solved the initial problem of creating a world that looked like a Starfield reality, but that doesn’t mean it was smooth sailing from there out. Having a vast open world is one thing; Making it attractive to gamers is a whole other issue.
According to Howard, Bethesda had to make sure that landing on each planet would be a pleasant experience, even if said planet was empty with only a few resources potentially left. At the end of the day, the downside of having such a huge open world is that you’ll get a few planets that “could be an isolated experience” for an explorer. But Howard added that there’s also “a strange beauty to being the only person on the planet,” and that’s exactly what you should focus on.
deja vu?
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen this tone in a Bethesda game. If you are looking for a beautiful ruin, the Fallout series comes to mind. The whole experience of walking through a ruined wasteland is incredibly strange but also beautiful. I loved wandering around the abandoned towns in Fallout 4, not knowing what I would encounter and just taking in the dead silence that surrounded the decrepit city.
I can’t wait, then, to explore the vast universe Starfield will offer when it launches in early 2023. I hope to get the same feeling again.
