Starfield is a "good game", says former designer, but "space is inherently boring"

Starfield is a “good game” but it failed to match the Fallout and Elder Scrolls games because of its use of procedural generation and the fact “space is inherently boring”.

That’s according to former Starfield systems designer Bruce Nesmith, who discussed the game with FRVR.

Starfield was Bethesda’s first new series in over 25 years, following its work on Fallout and Elder Scrolls, but its critical and commercial reception was below expectations of the beloved studio.

“I think it’s a good game,” said Nesmith. “I don’t think it’s in the same calibre as the other two, you know, Fallout or Skyrim, or Elder Scrolls rather, but I think it’s a good game. I worked on it, I’m proud of the work I did. I’m proud of the work that the people I knew did on it. I think they made a great game.”

As such, Nesmith believes Starfield “would have been received differently” had it been released by a different company without the same expectations.

He “leans towards procedural generation” as the game’s biggest problem, which was used to generate the various extraneous planets players can explore.

“I’m an enormous space fan, I’m an amateur astronomer, I’m up on all that stuff, a lot of the work I did on Starfield was on the astronomical data,” said Nesmith, “but space is inherently boring. It’s literally described as nothingness. So moving throughout that isn’t where the excitement is, in my opinion.