Starfield Developers Want A Desolate Universe Experience

Microsoft has a massive video game exclusive coming out this year. The ZeniMax Media purchase put Bethesda under their Xbox first-party studio umbrella, and with it came the exclusivity of Starfield. That’s something we’ve already seen PS5 fans take issue with as they started petitioning for their own port. With that said, if you have been keeping tabs on the game, you know that Bethesda developed a title that looks to be quite expansive. We know that there are over a thousand planets to explore in this science fiction RPG. However, don’t expect too many of them to contain life.

If you were hopeful that each planet would be booming with content and things to do, you’re out of luck. That’s to be expected because there’s no way a development studio will create each planet with its own settlements, line of quests, and creatures to interact with by hand. Instead, Todd Howard recently spoke on the Kinda Funny Games podcast, where he mentioned that we’re looking at about 10% of the planets containing life.

It looks like there will be planets that were built up to feature content related to different quests or storylines. Meanwhile, there is content built in a suite that will be generated within the planets you explore. But Todd Howard’s focus with Starfield is to make a universe that feels desolate. We’re not sure if there will be too much focus on ensuring players are exploring them endlessly. 

After all, it was also recently noted that Starfield wouldn’t feature land vehicles. So you’ll likely not have too much pressure in wandering around. We’ll have to see just how well the system plays in terms of being able to land your ship on the planet freely or if this will be predetermined. At any rate, you can go into this game with little expectation of finding cities or structures on any given planet. But that should make for quite the discovery when you finally do land on a planet that seems to be beaming with a bit more life, where you’ll meet NPCs and take on quests. Meanwhile, it was also noted that there would be some accessibility features to make the game a bit more enjoyable, such as adjustments to visuals and auditory.

Again, Starfield is slated to release this year. Currently, Starfield is slated to launch on September 6, 2023. When the game does launch into the marketplace, you’ll find it available on the PC and Xbox Series X/S platforms.