In a new interview, Todd Howard answered the question everyone must have had at the back of their mind when it comes to Starfield. Did Todd ever talk to Elon Musk about this?
And surprisingly, the answer is yes! Todd revealed he went to SpaceX and NASA, not so much for technical research as much as to get real life inspiration.
Todd actually describes going to SpaceX as “Avengers meets NASA”. Todd describes watching a giant machine that looked for very small imperfections, on the surface of giant fuselages, presumably for SpaceX’s ships and shuttles.
He also talked about going to other places, such as the Air and Space Museum in DC, and the Space Shuttle at NASA. He mainly imagined the gigantic scale of these ships and how they would leave orbit.
As for Elon, Todd describes his work at SpaceX to be “reaching the edge of physics on a lot of the stuff.” That stuff being things like leaving orbit, gravitational pull, and other space engineering things. Todd freely admits that he doesn’t really understand all this science and technology, but he does marvel at the human ingenuity and scale that makes these things possible.
Earlier in the interview, Todd described his earlier attempt to make such a space exploration game: Traveler, a game he didn’t finish but was making on the Apple ][. Todd also saw inspiration in games like Starflight, Star Control 2, and Sundog.
Of course, Elder Scolls and Fallout were completely different games, but Todd claims that Bethesda had always wanted to make a game like this.
You can read another interview from Todd Howard about Starfield here. Starfield is slated to launch on Xbox Series X|S and PC.
Finally, here is Todd’s description of catching SpaceX’s launch in Florida by accident, while he was off work in the Delaware Coast:
“I was on the Delaware Coast last month, and I went, I was outside, I was outside for some reason it was dark. And I saw this crazy light in the sky, and I thought it was like a helicopter. And then it didn’t go away, and I’m like, someone, what is that?
I call my friends to say, hey does everybody see this? What is that? And we just stood dumbfounded, looking at this thing in the sky. And like, that is a UFO.
Nobody takes their phone out. Everyone, I’m with like four people, everyone is too dumbstruck. You would think, why don’t you take a picture of this thing?
And the next day we found out it was in the news. It was the SpaceX launch in Florida. And I’m seeing it from Delaware, Maryland area. It was one of the most, it was incredible. It’s just even just that I am in complete awe of.”
Source: YouTube