Starfield Ending Was a “Panic Button” Idea According To Lead

During a talk at the Game Developers Conference 2024 in San Francisco, Starfield lead quest designer Will Shen discussed the title’s ending, explaining that it was created out of “necessity and urgency.”

Chatting about the many challenges faced during Bethesda’s last dev cycle, Shen, who has since left the company, gave some curious details about how the lengthy final quest was created in a rush at the very last minute.

“We were finally at a state in the project where we could play through the whole [game]. And it became very clear that we were missing the large final location that was going to tie the story together and have a satisfying action-filled payoff. I was both implementing the main quest and leading the quest design team, so I had absolutely no time. The entire quest design team was already overbooked,” Shen explained.

While Skyrim’s development team hovered around 100 people, over 500 people were working on Starfield. This made collaboration difficult.

“It’s more difficult than ever to know who does what, who you’re supposed to report to,” said Fallout 76 lead level designer Daryl Brigner.

When it seemed like Starfield’s main quest was missing its finale, Shen contacted senior level designer Steve Cornet. “He was definitely our panic button,” Shen said.

A recent patch implemented over 500 bug fixes and updates to the title, including photo mode and an updated ship UI.

Starfield is currently available to play on PC and Xbox Series X/S. Despite persistent rumors, an insider has confirmed that the game isn’t in development for PlayStation 5.