Bethesda’s Todd Howard has revealed only 10% of Starfield’s 1,000 planets have life on them.
Speaking to Kinda Funny Games, Howard explained how Bethesda populated Starfield’s universe, saying different planets serve different purposes.
“For us, we view it as giving you [choices] when you look at a system. Here’s the many things you could do,” he said. This could include visiting barren planets that are only there to collect resources, or planets with major cities and settlements for players to explore and progress the story in.
“Obviously it’s procedural, so there’s no way we’re going to go and handcraft an entire planet,” Howard continued. “What we do is we handcraft individual locations and some of those are placed specifically, [like] the main cities and other quest locations, and then we have a suite of them that are generated or placed when you land depending on that planet.”
There are merits to even the emptier planets though, Howard said, as it all balances the busy ones out to create a believable universe.
“I think it is a moment when you land on some of these barren planets, and again we will generate certain things for you to find on them,” Howard continued. “But if you look at a planet, you see the resources, it has things you want.”
The more than one thousand planets available in Starfield will therefore give players plenty to explore, and even if a lot of them are on the thinner side story wise, Starfield still features more handcrafted content than any other Bethesda game.
Starfield is perhaps the most anticipated video game release in recent memory and has therefore captured the attention of fans in some wild and wonderful ways. Virtual sandwiches got people talking about it being locked at 30 frames per second, for example, while an ESRB rating revealed drugs, in-game purchases, and jetpack sex.
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.
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