Starfield’s Long Development May Not Save It From Past Mistakes

As I watched the Starfield Direct, I couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that I was watching the trailers for games like Fallout 76 and No Man’s Sky all over again. Mind you, I don’t mean trailers for the games as they are now. Their respective studios have fixed many of those game’s problems since their releases. Instead, I’m talking about the announcement trailers released before Fallout 76 and No Man’s Sky were launched. After all, the Starfield stream’s gameplay clips were all shot and edited in the same seemingly careful way that made those other reveals feel (at least in retrospect) dishonest.

In the past, Todd Howard has made some fancy statements regarding Bethesda’s games, many of which were meaningless boasts. Remember when he said Fallout 76 would support “16 times the detail” seen in Fallout 4 and include a better lighting system? Well, Howard made a surprisingly similar claim during the Starfield Direct and added that the game would also feature a new animation system. Obviously, Starfield‘s long development time could have indeed resulted in such improvements. However, most of BGS’ titles take quite a long time to develop, and the studio still has a reputation for over-promising.

Actually, Starfield‘s deep dive even included a line that echoed one of Howard’s most infamous promises. In 2011, when Howard introduced audiences to The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, he uttered the line, “You see that mountain? You can climb it.” That claim was supposed to get fans excited about the size and scope of Skyrim, and, to be fair, Skyrim is certainly a sizeable game. However, the exact wording of the claim proved to be something of an exaggeration. Howard makes a similar claim about Starfield and the many moons players will see as they explore all the game’s planets. According to him, they will be more than backdrops. If players can see a celestial body, they can land on it and mine it for resources.

Suggestions like that put fans in that same awkward position. Given the many technological advancements made between the launches of Skyrim and Starfield, gamers might actually be able to explore every chunk of space rock in the latter game. Then again, Howard has a history of making claims that Bethesda’s games can’t live up to no matter how impressive the final product may be. His decision to spiritually recycle one of his most infamous claims makes you wonder if the Starfield team has really learned from past mistakes. At the very least, lines like that trigger a part of long-time fans’ brains that reminds them to be cautiously optimistic if they’re going to be optimistic.

Speaking of exploration, in 2020, Howard claimed that Starfield will populate the vastness of its dark, digital space with 1000 planets as well as various space stations, freighters, and party ships players can also apparently visit. He is sticking by that claim, which could explain why the game has taken so long to develop. Crafting 1000 explorable worlds is no easy task, even with procedural generation aids.

However, no matter how many alien planets players can land on, if they aren’t worth exploring, why bother having them? This exact same problem eventually impacted the Mass Effect series. The first Mass Effect game features plenty of “explorable” planets, but aside from a few key ones, most of them are open, flat plains that you drive around in your futuristic car. Many gamers hated that design, which is why BioWare scaled back its ambitions and focused only on developing worlds that served a purpose in Mass Effect 2 and 3.