Todd Howard has made an interesting revelation about Starfield in a new interview with Esquire.
Todd described the game to his interviewer, making it a point to say that it’s not like Star Trek, because every piece of ship we see has utility (AKA is based off of Bethesda’s NASA punk aesthetic).
And then he said this:
“We couldn’t have conceived or made a game like Starfield before. We needed to grow. Even then, it took far longer than we thought it would. The longer the journey you go on, the harder it is to maintain.”
It’s a new wrinkle to the story we had known for quite some time about Starfield’s development. As we ourselves have retold, Bethesda officially revealed the game in E3 2018, and partnered with Microsoft close to the finish line in 2021. They took about five years of proper development to finish the game.
However, Bethesda had the idea of this game for over 25 years. We had also covered Bethesda’s multiple attempts to make what they had called “Skyrim in space”, including making a Star Trek game. The consensus we had all come to believe was that Bethesda had to wait for the technology to catch up before making the game that they had in their heads would be possible.
But apparently, there was more to it after all. As Todd described it, Bethesda as a company had to grow before they could make the game we know now as Starfield. It’s possible that if we got “Skyrim in space” much earlier, it would nowhere be as ambitious or sprawling as the game we have now.
In fact, that younger Bethesda would have likely released a buggier game, with less ambition than they have presented now, and with less refined combat mechanics. That combat was something they tweaked alongside id and MachineGames, to make it the best that it could be.
It’s not just Bethesda, but the other game companies who were at the same journey of growing up in the industry, such as Insomniac Games, Nintendo, Rockstar Games, Santa Monica Studio, and others, who did a lot of growing up through the years. As a result, not only are their games better made, with better graphics and writing. The games themselves are better conceived of at the onset. While we might still see the occasional misfire release like Balan Wonderworld, for the most part newer releases of games, sequels and original IPs alike, are made in a way that the developers have identified the audience and now how to satisfy them, and sometimes, even surprise them.
Bethesda’s story is typical of other game companies of their vintage, and stands as a lesson for newer, smaller studios. If you stick around long enough, you might also end up making your own Starfield. Or Splatoon, Horizon Forbidden West, Red Dead Redemption 2, that sort of thing that proves you are now more than what made you successful the first time.
