Copyright Wccftech
There's no doubt that Starfield, Bethesda Game Studios's first new intellectual property in over twenty-five years, did not ignite as much passion in the studio's fans as its other franchises, Elder Scrolls and Fallout, have done before. Even Bruce Nesmith, who worked on Starfield as well as more successful releases like Fallout 3 and 4 and Elder Scrolls Oblivion and Skyrim over the course of his 17-year-long career at Bethesda, admitted that while a good game, the latest release of the studio isn't in the same caliber as the other two series they're known for. Speaking to FRVR, Nesmith, who left Bethesda in late 2021 and is now a full-time science fiction author, said that the problem was not space, which is kinda boring by default. The issue was rather with how the game failed to populate the planets with engaging enemies and things to do. 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, but space is inherently boring. It’s literally described as nothingness. So moving throughout that isn’t where the excitement is, in my opinion. But when the planets start to feel very samey and you don’t start to feel the excitement on the planets, that’s to me where it falls apart. I was also disappointed when, pretty much, the only serious enemy you fought were people… there’s lots of cool alien creatures, but they’re like the wolves in Skyrim. They’re just there, they don’t contribute, you don’t have the variety of serious opponents that are story generators. Personally, I think Nesmith nailed the explanation. I also felt that the exploration loop that Bethesda fans love in Elder Scrolls and Fallout was missing for some reason. In those games, often the best experience comes simply by exploring the map without even caring about the story missions, but that's because they are littered with interesting discoveries, dungeons, and encounters. Starfield really lacked in that. Whether it was due to the procedural generation system (which was criticized by fellow developers from OnceLost Games) or the fact that they felt like the space planets had to be emptier due to the lore, I cannot say. Still, Bethesda hasn't stopped working on the game. They recently teased a new story DLC, new gameplay systems, and some space changes. According to the latest rumors, all this new content should launch alongside the PlayStation 5 version sometime in 2026.
