Starfield will feature one of the biggest open worlds to date, which is simultaneously the best and the worst thing about it. Bethesda’s portion of the Xbox Summer 2023 showcase finally revealed more information about the long-awaited title, and the details are stunning. The combat looks sharp, the dialogue system has intriguing depth, and the graphics look breathtaking, especially with the new lighting system. However, one of the most impressive things showcased was the cities and planets Bethesda has crafted to ensure Starfield provides a rich and varied open-world experience.
Given Bethesda’s track record, Starfield’s massive open world should be no surprise. The studio has been making some of the best open worlds for decades, and they have only improved as time progressed. Bethesda has been widely praised for Skyrim and its expansive map, which had things to discover in every corner. Fallout 4 continued this legacy with a bigger map, which Fallout 76 topped more than two times over with its Appalachia map. Despite how beloved these games are, the latter two, in particular, have flaws that could cause concern for Starfield and how it approaches the open world.
Starfield’s Cities Are Bethesda’s Best Yet
Starfield’s cities are one of the most exciting things revealed in the summer showcase, and they look like the best Bethesda has ever created. In particular, New Atlantis, which the Constellation exploratory organization calls home, is one of the biggest cities the studio has made. This goes beyond size, which is considerable. New Atlantis will feature more unique art, crowds, and quests than any of the studio’s previous cities.
Other cities include Neon, which is very much inspired by the style of neon-lit sci-fi cities like Star Wars’ Coruscant and Blade Runner’s Los Angeles. Another of Starfield’s cities is Akila City, the home of the Freestar Collective faction and a more wild-west-inspired city. It seems like Bethesda has taken time to fill Starfield’s cities with small stories and interactions that make them feel lived in and realistic.
Starfield’s Galaxy Is Huge, But It Might Feel Empty
In addition to detailed, rich cities, Starfield promises a galaxy full of exploration opportunities, boasting one thousand planets players can visit. With that many worlds, however, some are bound to feel empty. In the Starfield Direct presentation, Bethesda stated that it wants to give players more freedom to explore than ever before, which entails exploring planets both exciting and quiet. Describing the worlds as quiet is partially concerning, but understanding the impressive tech behind Starfield’s exploration system sheds some light on how the planets may feel in-game.
Starfield’s planets are procedurally generated. Once the landscape has been crafted, other elements begin to populate the planet, such as resources, enemy encounters, notable locations, and quests. No one planet is the same across playthroughs, so it will be a different experience every time. This is a great detail that adds a tremendous amount of replay value to Starfield. Yet, there is still an amount of apprehension here, as this system can lead to the repetitiveness that has characterized the side content of Bethesda’s previous games. This mainly occurs in dungeons, which feature a relatively small set of level design assets that sometimes make these areas feel too similar.
For games like Skyrim and Fallout 4, there is some plausible deniability regarding the dungeons' look and feel. Since they exist in the same general location (for instance, Boston, in Fallout 4’s case), it makes sense that areas like factories would have similar architecture and layout. However, Starfield’s open world will allow players to explore the entire galaxy. If the dozens of dungeons in Skyrim and Fallout 4 can feel stale after a while, it isn’t hard to imagine that this feeling will be worse when applied to hundreds of planets in Starfield.
Some Of Starfield’s One Thousand Planets May Be Pretty “Quiet”
Regardless of promises, Starfield’s whopping one thousand planets still make it inevitable there will be an inherent sense of emptiness throughout the exploratory content. Bethesda essentially confirmed as much when describing some of the game’s planets as quiet. Granted, these quiet planets will still provide, at the very least, resources for base building, but over time the expansive universe could be rendered tedious as the gameplay footage depicts the resource collection as pointing a laser at a rock until it breaks apart.
Still, it’s debatable whether or not features like this are even suitable for a game like Starfield. Exploration is at the heart of the game’s story, but exploring a thousand planets worth of resource collection hardly sounds exciting. A massive yet empty-feeling galaxy could be a detriment, as was the case for Fallout 76.
Fallout 76 has a much larger map than its predecessor, which is impressive and shows what Bethesda’s technology can do. However, it feels even more empty than Fallout 4’s Boston. ittedly, this has been improved over the game’s life cycle, with new content filling out the more sparely populated areas. On launch, however, it was a big problem, as Appalachia felt big, but exploring it didn’t feel as rewarding or engaging as roaming in Skyrim or The Capital Wasteland in Fallout 3.
Perhaps the goal of Fallout 76’s map was to provide ample open space for players to build custom bases and express creativity with that toolset. From an exploratory perspective, though, it results in a large world that lacks any real depth. Starfield faces the same problem, and there is also potential that it may be dealt with by leaning on a contentious Fallout 4 feature.
Starfield Needs To Not Repeat Fallout 4’s Mistake
One of the biggest criticisms of Fallout 4 was its use of radiant quests, which Starfield may use to fill up its one thousand planets. Fallout 4’s settlement quests are the game’s most maligned content, leading to hundreds of memes featuring Preston Garvey. Radiant quests, in and of themselves, aren’t bad, but when their content is repeated dozens of times over, it defeats the sense of variety they are intended to create. This was the case with Fallout 4, which is much smaller than what Starfield will be, so there is certainly cause for concern.
There is no doubt that Bethesda has invested an extreme amount of care into making Starfield’s exploration system feel deep and varied. Still, it’s entirely possible that exploration can become boring, especially if similar quest types are radiated throughout the galaxy’s procedurally generated planets. Battling space pirates can be fun, but it’s going to lose its luster after several dozen times, just as helping settlements in Fallout 4 became tedious and annoying.
Bethesda has likely learned from this mistake and hopefully has crafted a new approach that will keep Starfield from repeating it. However, it must be said that the handcrafted content that Bethesda produces is what made its previous titles feel so engaging and alive. The size of the open world in Starfield won’t be as impressive if it doesn’t have the handcrafted touch games like Skyrim used to make them unique and memorable.
Source: Bethesda Softworks/YouTube
