Starfield Almost Included a Resource Management Component

In a new episode of the podcast Kiwi Talks (detailed by PCGamesN), Bruce Nesmith, a former Bethesda systems designer who worked on Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 4, and Starfield, gave some details about what had to be cut from the massive space exploration RPG ahead of its launch.

“In Starfield, there was a whole [mechanic for] building ship components from natural resources,” Nesmith revealed. “There just wasn’t room in the art schedule or programming schedule for ways to make it work sufficiently with the design to put it in the game.”

“We wanted to have a complete set of being able to mine materials [and] send them (automated) to a factory on another world. That would then build spaceship modules that you could then build your own spaceship with.

We wanted to have an entire economy working with that as a foundation, and become a strategy game/resource management game on top of the role-playing game. But it was just too much, and it had to be pulled.”

A recent patch added Starfield‘s first land vehicle, the Rev-8. Along with this fun new way to traverse the planets players discover on their journey, the update also introduced new graphics settings, making it easier to prioritize between visuals and performance.

The Shattered Space expansion for the game is scheduled to be released on September 30, 2024.

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.