With over 1000 planets to explore, Starfield isn't exactly short of places to visit. But the game has also faced some criticism that most of these planets are deserted, and that Bethesda should have focused more on creating more handcrafted locations rather than going for a massive number. Now, in an interview with MinnMax, former Bethesda employee Bruce Nesmith, who worked on the game, has talked a bit about the challenge of this.
"Game director Todd Howard pretty much pulled the number 100 for the number of solar systems out of thin air, but the more we went on, the more it was like, 'OK, so all core activity takes place in these two dozen in the settled systems and the rest of it is open space, but people love our big games. They love that open area to explore, so let's go ahead and let 'em have it'."
The fact that players love big worlds is one thing, but it often comes at the expense of making the world feel empty. Many open world games have had to deal with this criticism and was one of the reasons why Ubisoft shrank the space in Assassin's Creed Mirage, for example. Nesmith says that this balance is difficult and that during development you always have to make a choice.
"I think some of the exploration stuff didn't come through as well as it could've because they decided to make other choices. And never misunderstand this. In every game studio on the face of this planet, they know the choices they're making. They know the things that are not going to be in there. They know what the players are going to moan about. But you got to make the hard choice."
What do you think? A less open world with more content, or do you like that the world feels bigger but at the expense of things to do?