Starfield is a “good game” but it failed to match the Fallout and Elder Scrolls games because of its use of procedural generation and the fact “space is inherently boring”.
That’s according to former Starfield systems designer Bruce Nesmith, who discussed the game with FRVR.
Starfield was Bethesda’s first new series in over 25 years, following its work on Fallout and Elder Scrolls, but its critical and commercial reception was below expectations of the beloved studio.
“I think it’s a good game,” said Nesmith. “I don’t think it’s in the same calibre as the other two, you know, Fallout or Skyrim, or Elder Scrolls rather, but I think it’s a good game. I worked on it, I’m proud of the work I did. I’m proud of the work that the people I knew did on it. I think they made a great game.”
As such, Nesmith believes Starfield “would have been received differently” had it been released by a different company without the same expectations.
He “leans towards procedural generation” as the game’s biggest problem, which was used to generate the various extraneous planets players can explore.
“I’m an enormous space fan, I’m an amateur astronomer, I’m up on all that stuff, a lot of the work I did on Starfield was on the astronomical data,” said Nesmith, “but space is inherently boring. It’s literally described as nothingness. So moving throughout that isn’t where the excitement is, in my opinion.
“But when the planets start to feel very samey and you don’t start to feel the excitement on the planets, that’s to me where it falls apart,” he continued. “I was also disappointed when, pretty much, the only serious enemy you fought were people… there’s lots of cool alien creatures, but they’re like the wolves in Skyrim. They’re just there, they don’t contribute, you don’t have the variety of serious opponents that are story generators.”
In the same podcast, as Eurogamer previously reported, Nesmith stated he’s “eternally shocked” at the continued popularity of Skyrim, on which he was lead designer.
“I think Skyrim did the open world in a way that nobody had ever done before and very few people have really tried to do since,” he said. “And one of those things that we accepted, which a lot of developers struggle to accept, is that this means you’re going to have quirkiness. You’re going to have weird stuff happen. And if you say that’s okay, you can get this diamond.”
Last month Bethesda marked the two year anniversary of Starfield with a secret message on social media, with fans speculating about further DLC.
Bethesda has also teased a forthcoming update to add an overhauled “cruise mode” to space travel, following a datamined leak.
What’s still expected is a release of Starfield on PS5, which could give it a new lease of life.
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