A former Starfield devs believes that including more than 1,000 planets wasn't a good idea
, by Thibaut
When it came out in September 2023, Starfield offered a vast universe to explore, with more than 1,000 planets spread across more than 100 distinct systems. This excessive scale may have detracted from the overall experience.
After more than 14 years at Bethesda Game Studios, Nathan Purkeypile chose to leave during the development of Starfield in 2021. In a recent interview, he didn’t hesitate to share his thoughts on the game. In particular, he stated that the game features too many planets, and that he would have preferred to focus on smaller, yet more unique, worlds.
"I’d say that’s absolutely correct: if I’d been in charge of Starfield, I wouldn’t have done it that way at all. I would have created a handful of planets with custom layouts.
Even when playing Starfield after its release, during the main quest, I’d come across repetitive locations, and I’d think to myself, 'Well, yeah, because you can only create so many dungeons, and if you have a thousand planets, you’re bound to end up reusing the same content'.
It’s not really a procedurally generated game. The dungeons are procedurally generated, but it’s not in the same vein as No Man’s Sky. So, right from the start, I was drawing parallels with Mass Effect 1 and how those procedurally generated planets with repetitive dungeons worked. And I thought to myself, 'I don’t think that’s a good idea.'"