Bethesda says most of Starfield's 1000+ planets are dull on purpose because 'when the astronauts went to the moon, there was nothing there' but 'they certainly weren't bored'

"1000+ planets are dull on purpose"

No, they're dull because no human team could make 1000 planets worth of interesting content in a single game development cycle.

Most of the planets are dull on purpose because my graphics card catches fire if there's too much excitement on screen. Thanks for looking out for me, Todd!

Ah yes “…Bethesda's managing director, and Todd Howard, who is Todd Howard.”

Thanks for clearing that up AI writer.

Also how is it thrilling to “blast off” and “set foot on a new planet” when the game is more clicking through menus and fast traveling.

In No man’s sky you actually land. In star field you fast travel.

To give an impression of what it’s been like for me:

I had a quest where I needed Iron. I found a random planet that had it, and picked a spot in the middle of the scan readouts. Arrive, looks like a barren rock - but that’s fine because I only wanted rocks. However, I see something in the distance, and check it out. On the way, I find a wandering trader taking her alien dog for a walk, and sell some stuff weighing me down. I find a cave, where a colonist is hiding out with a respiratory infection - and am able to help them get out as a little mini-quest, though the infection spreads to me.

I come past a little mining installation, where I find a bounty hunter that tells me of a bounty nearby she’s offering to split with me. We do so, fighting a base full of raiders to get to their captain, and I finally decide to leave.

The key here is, I don’t think any of those quests are amazing - they’re likely very dynamically generated. But they’re also not fun to “seek them out” - just to come across them in some other mission, like trying to make an outpost or mining for stuff.

Exploring is supposed to be a reward in itself

Oh yes, exploring 6 levels of nested menus is incredibly rewarding

Todd forgets this is a game and not real life where you have to train and study for 30 years to go to the moon. He forgot that the main intricacy is the stories you can make for the player.

Like assassins creed has big cities. Which feel dead, not enjoyable.

Disclaimer: My comment is a reaction to the stuff Todd and his minions said in the article, not necessarily about the game itself. I haven't played Starfield yet. I just find the statements really weak and want to express why I see it that way.

Yeaaahh that's nice for maybe a couple of hours, but then it starts to get boring. That's not how you keep players engaged, although there are of course those who don't find that boring at all.

We're not astronauts, we're not there. Astronauts had the thrill of the voyage through space, stepping on the moon and feeling with ones own body how it is to walk on the moon's dust in low gravity. Also astronauts had and have a shitload of scientific equipment and experiments to carry out, i.e., a purpose beyond the mere jolly walking.

If they were just there for walking and that for days, weeks, months, they would get bored pretty fast as well.

Take a look at No Man's Sky. Similar problem. The procedural generation algorithm made planets look familiar after you've seen a couple. There is nothing new. Exploration became unrewarded. But Hello Games has massively improved on that over the years and produced a game where you can sink dozens of hours without getting bored so easily.

Starfield sounds like an okay game but all the PR responding to complaints sounds like an absolute disaster. Stop letting Todd answer these things directly

I really don't understand all the negative comments. It feels like a very fun game and I can't wait to play it again.

I really like the game so far but it really needs some kind of vehicle for travelling around planets. Like the exocraft from No Man's Sky.

They thought they had a brilliant idea, but it's not. It's a classic. The space is beautiful, of course, but it's the interactions that make a game unique. No interaction, no party.

Bro I've spent at least ten hours just building cool space ships.

nice argument lol

I have no clue what people are talking about? I have beaten it twice and surveyed an entire solar system and there was plenty. You can fly around to any point in most planets and moons and have stuff generate at each landing, within hiking distance.

I feel like the game is so big and good, the haters are just hating and being stupidly immature about it.

Yeah. I failed math on purpose too.

Why don't they just have Skyrim level of detail on all 1000 planets, smh!

If there's more going on outside my window than in the $90 game I just bought, there's a problem.

I've been enjoying Starfield - but the empty planets suck, especially without vehicles. The scanning thing is boring and dumb, worse than trying to get 100% on a NMS world. It's a shame that fast travel disconnects you from the space feel of the game, but it makes the rest of the game playable. I like the game overall, but they have definitely dropped the ball on space travel. In theory it'd be cool to come across different "dungeons" etc, as in Skyrim when wandering around, but doesn't happen in Starfield because you're generally not going to happen upon them. It's not interesting to drop down to random planets.

I gave Starfield a fair chance, I played it for 20 hours, patiently waiting on why it deserved an "8.4" rating from critics. But it never delivered. The gameplay is a copy of Fallout 4, the user interface is a mess (they've gone backwards somehow) and the world is just so generic and uninspiring that I couldn't bear one more minute of it.

I can see why it's got a 5.5 from real players.

On a side note, the gaming reviews now mirror Rotten tomatoes. What the professional paid "critics" love, doesn't necessarily mean the players do, and vice versa. The real players always give a more fair rating.

Bethesda, are you high?

Did this game focus on anything in particular and do that well? Exploring isn't it.

I'm tired of being negative gamer. This game looks fun even if it isn't mind blowing, but seeing as I've never played a Bethesda game I think I'm just as likely to play one of the older games because they look about as good.

This is a nice sentiment, but it falls apart when you realize that a lot of the exploration is procedurally generated POI that eventually copies not just assets, but layouts and granular details. That tends to detract from a sense of wonder and mystery.

Which is fine, if they would just embrace that instead of trying to change how people perceive their work.

I'm an Elite Dangerous veteran and have no problem with that. I think it's more realistic.

I'm about 18 hours in and the illusion of variety hasn't worn off yet. Plenty of things to find, with some travel time though. Unlock/upgrade your backpack boosters and it's almost like Tribes though, as you go flying across the landscape in short bursts to keep moving forward in the air.

That maybe so, but if Earth had 1000 moons, we'd have likely gone to one with something interesting on it.

Just wait then DLCs start to populate the void...

Apart from that, what I've seen on some YT videos is impressive - When they populate a planet, they really mean it.

I still haven't found a completely empty planet, there is always outposts, abandoned mines or caves with space pirates or other factions. Every time I walk to a point there is like 3 more points you can just explore endlessly

Why are they selling it as a fantasy action adventure game when it was a moon simulator all along.

The moon is boring, so every planet in the universe must be boring. Earth is mostly capitalist right now, so every planet with humans must be one form or another of late capitalist dystopia. A whole galaxy made of inert rocks, fast travel, and people eager to exchange gunfire with you.

I haven't played it yet, but from what I've seen the setting looks even more bleak and depressing than Bethesda Fallout.

ROFL…

But that's real life, this is a video game. People will not share that same respect for it lol.

How is this any different than No Man's Sky?

Straight out of "30 things I hate about your pitch", which is a great GDC talk. In that talk he has one thing that is "in the real world you can't double jump". Don't make a realistic setting that is realistic just because.

The thing about video games is that they're a multivariate equation. Fun is a variable, and so is realism. Depending on how much realism there already is, and the nature of it, adding more can also increase the fun but it can also take away from the fun. There's a reason that even the hardcore simmers who do things like drive pretend trucks across Europe in real time or run pretend air traffic control at pretend airports pay to pretend to do those things instead of getting paid to do them for real.

Looking at a boring planet on a screen and slgetting into a rocket and blast to a boring planet is obviously the same.

Can they let gamers or modders fill those? I'm sure many would love to claim a planet and get creative in it.

Crazy amount of spin

planets are as empty as todd howards soul.

OK? We're bored though. The astronauts had other shit to do.

Video games are supposed to be a fun escape of reality...

Glad I went with Bomb Rush Cyberfunk over this.

Cool, so you put in intricate research discoveries and generations of inventions and innovation and matched the sense of wonder being the handful of people that stepped foot on a non-teristrial surface?

Edit link I intended to hyperlink

You people want to hate this game so bad 🤣

Looked boring af, now getting confirmation it's boring af