Having worked as an environment artist on games led by Todd Howard at Bethesda Game Studios (BGS), he had insight into various aspects of their work.
According to the experienced environment designer, it was a mistake to include more than a thousand planets in Starfield. He worked at BGS for 14 years, serving as a world designer on Fallout 3, Fallout 4 and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, as well as lead graphic artist on Fallout 76 and the Fallout 3 expansions The Pitt and Point Lookout. He also worked as a lead lighting artist during the early stages of Starfield’s development, contributing to the game’s Neon City, before leaving BGS two years prior to the game’s release.
In a recent interview with The Examined Game, he was asked if he would have changed anything about how planet exploration works in Starfield. He responded that, had he been able to decide on the game’s overall structure, he would not have included more than 1,000 planets; instead, he would have focused on creating a smaller number of distinctive planets. He stated that the plan could have worked well if BGS had used procedural generation to create the planets. However, as it was, it reminded him of the first Mass Effect, where players who landed on planets not part of the main story encountered repetitive content.
“If I were in charge of Starfield, I would not have done it that way at all. I would have created a few planets with unique layouts. Even when I played Starfield after its release, I encountered repeated locations during the main quest. I thought, ‘Well, yeah, because you can only create a certain number of dungeons’, and if you have a thousand planets, you’re bound to repeat content. It’s not a procedural game. Those dungeons are built; they’re not going the full No Man’s Sky route. Even early on, I was drawing parallels with Mass Effect 1 and how those procedural planets with repeated dungeons played out. I thought it was a bad idea. If you’re going to have thousands of planets, you need to generate unique content all the time, not just stitch stuff together in slightly different ways. That’s not procedural. I call it ‘space quilting’, where it’s just chunks of things getting rearranged,” said Purkeypile.
Starfield was released for PlayStation 5 in April, along with two major content updates. The Terran Armada is a paid DLC story expansion that introduces new characters, locations, enemies, missions, systems and rewards. Free Lanes provides free enhancements to the gameplay experience, including interplanetary travel, new encounters, new sights and dungeons, and a new land vehicle called the Moon Jumper.
Source: VGC (https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/i-dont-think-this-is-a-good-idea-veteran-bethesda-world-artist-says-starfield-having-1000-planets-was-the-wrong-move/)