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“When the astronauts went to the moon, there was nothing there. They certainly weren’t bored."
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Bethesda
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Bethesda
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That’s according to managing director Ashley Cheng, who told theNew York Timesthat the devs approachedStarfield’s universe with the belief that not every planet “is supposed to be Disney World”.
Starfield’s planetshave come in for a good amount of internet chatter lately, with players discovering that not all planets are made equal as they venture further into the game’s universe. In fact, as it turns out, a lot of planets are actually pretty empty.
That’s a feature, not a bug, when it comes to Starfield’s attempt to lean into its starry-eyed depiction of travelling the vast cosmos, Cheng insisted - and it also goes back to the game’s slightly harder sci-fi influences, which aims to sprinkle in more realism and a deeper sense of place in the universe than your typical sci-fi romp.
“The point of the vastness of space is you should feel small. It should feel overwhelming,” Cheng explained. “Everyone’s concerned that empty planets are going to be boring. But when the astronauts went to the moon, there was nothing there. They certainly weren’t bored.”
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Bethesda
In short, it sounds like if you’re bored with wandering empty planets, that’s probably on you and you should better immerse yourself in the dream of being an interplanetary traveller and just enjoy staring at moon dust for another few hours.
“We could have made a game where there are four cities and four planets,” Howard said. “But that would not have the same feeling of being this explorer.”
Howard added that the dev team deliberately built moments where players would “get some periods of loneliness”, making the moments where you stumble upon something stand out even more.
If nothing else, it’ll at least take you a while to finda sea to walk intoas you stare down another exhaustingly exhaustive video game begging for dozens of hours of your time to see to completion.
