Todd Howard reflects on Starfield development: "How do we generate these planets? Is that even a good idea? OK, maybe at the time, no, but we made it work"
Sep. 27, 2024Starfield was a uniquely challenging RPG for Bethesda
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
As theStarfield Shattered Space DLCapproaches, Bethesda boss Todd Howard discussed the making of the sci-fi RPG in an interview with BAFTA, reflecting on howStarfieldchallenged the studio and necessitated the planet-generating tech which previously sparked debate over the feel of the game.
“We cut very little from our games at Bethesda, which is why the games are so irresponsibly large,” Howard says. “And it really comes to the whole team, you know, putting a lot of creativity into the game. It’s obviously not just me, and I think that’s what really makes them special.”
Howard touches on his role as director and stresses the input of multiple disciplines and teams – artists, engineers, writers, and many more. Starfield proved to be an especially difficult project; Howard previously said thatit took seven years of development to really find the fun in the game, and that he “thought we would find the answers faster.”
“We pushed ourself, kind of, in every part of the game,” Howard tells BAFTA. “But the biggest challenge was, first, how do we generate these planets? Is that even a good idea? OK, maybe at the time, no, but we made it work. You know, just, can we even generate a planet? And then once we could generate all of these, the simulation of the solar system around you ultimately is what’s fun about that. There’s a technological challenge in making it work, but then there’s a design challenge in, ‘How do you make that fun minute to minute, and then hour to hour for everybody playing it?'”
In an interview earlier this year, he revisited this sticking point. “We see the feedback, we see a lot of players saying ‘this is what I want out of a Bethesda game, which is to explore a world in a certain way, and Starfield didn’t give me that. I prefer the way it’s done in Fallout or Elder Scrolls’ and perfectly understandable, right?” he said, later adding that, “knowing that content is going to be different than you’ve seen from us in the past when you’re exploring a landscape, that’s some of the trade-offs we’ll make to do what we think makes a science fiction game like this […] and each of the franchises should kind of be its own thing.”
Shattered Space has been positioned as the first big content drop in what Howard describes asyears of “annual” story expansions and post-launch support, with Bethesda eyeing another Skyrim-grade tail for a game that proved to be a herculean expense and effort.
Sign up to the GamesRadar+ Newsletter
Weekly digests, tales from the communities you love, and more
Starfield Shattered Space will lean into mystery and horror in a hand-crafted world, because Bethesda wants to remind us that “space is scary”
Open-world dress-up game Infinity Nikki is serious business – so serious its devs have already banned over 80 accounts for cheating: “We implore all Stylists to adhere to the game rules”
Hideo Kojima seems to be testing Death Stranding 2, but it’s not going well: “I fell asleep twice while on a delivery and ran the vehicle into a cliff”
Todd Howard “rolled his eyes” at the idea of Troy Baker playing Indiana Jones in the Great Circle, but the Bethesda boss later told him “you’re doing a hell of a job”
