Some of the most successful RPG studios of the last decade are taking radically different approaches as gaming enters the next generation of consoles. BioWare, for example, is doubling down on Mass Effect with a remaster of the original trilogy and a new chapter in the series. Bethesda is also turning to the stars, as the studio will be taking on its first new IP in over two decades: Starfield.
Bethesda has kept much about its upcoming game under wraps. Confirmed to be set for released before The Elder Scrolls 6, Starfield is a space-faring RPG which appears to take place across multiple planets. At Brighton Digital 2020, Todd Howard suggested that the game would make extensive use of procedural generation to build large in-game worlds. If the game’s multiple planets are going to be successful, Starfield needs to avoid one major problem that has plagued another sci-fi series, Star Wars.
For all its success, Star Wars has infamously one-dimensional planets, meaning most of the franchise’s planets have just one biome. There are desert planets like Tatooine and Jakku, ice planets like Hoth, swamp planets like Dagobah, and so on. At this point, diversifying the environments of Star Wars’ planets could violate the original style of the movies as much as removing the wipe transitions.
However, Starfield’s game world will need to avoid one-dimensional planets even if there are diverse environments to explore across the games’ galaxy as a whole. If each planet only has one kind of biome then those planets risk feeling repetitive. If reaching a new biome requires travelling to a new planet, then that travelling – especially if it involves multiple loading screens – risks making the game’s world feel segmented and small.
Bethesda has not revealed much about the upcoming game since announcing its development. Fans don’t have much to go on besides a few leaked Starfield images showing a spaceship and a figure that appears to be the player character. It’s possible the game will attempt to create an in-game galaxy without loading screens, where players can travel from planet to planet seamlessly. That’s seems unlikely, however. It’s easy to see how rendering in-game interplanetary travel could make it feel either unrealistically short or frustratingly time-consuming and empty.
Starfield could find success sticking to a handful of major planets and fleshing them out with diverse environments. It’s currently unknown how many planets or solar systems Bethesda will attempt to incorporate into the game. While Starfield will make use of procedural generation, that does not mean that it will randomly generate its map like the famously enormous world of The Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall.
Procedural generation automatically builds a base environment for developers to flesh out and was used to create parts of Oblivion and Skyrim was well. Bethesda will have a key decision to make with Starfield’s design, choosing whether to prioritize a few larger, potentially more detailed planets, or creating a larger amount of planets that are either smaller..
The name of the game itself could hint that Bethesda will focus on a smaller number of stars or planets. A starfield is the stars visible in the field of view of a telescope or any other device used to view space. Though a starfield can technically encompass any area, it’s also an inherently limited view, which could imply that Bethesda will focus on a limited area in-game.
Hopefully if Starfield does make extensive use of procedural generation, it could be used to help diversify the game’s planets as well. For now, Bethesda fans will have to wait for more news from the studio. In August, Bethesda announced that there would be no official Starfield news until 2021, so that wait may nearly be over.
Starfield is in development.
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