Bethesda On Starfield's Big, Empty Planets: Not Every Location "Is Supposed To Be Disney World"

Turns out that a big, empty planet is the perfect environment in which you can contemplate your insignificance in a cold and uncaring universe.

[Jin_Sakai]

Because everyone wants a barren wasteland with a 1km barrier when exploring a planet.

Let’s see…

You can’t continuously walk the circumference of a planet: you'll hit a boundary eventually

You can’t fly your ship anywhere on a planet: Landing and taking off are purely cutscenes, and there's no way to fly to a different region without returning to orbit first

You can’t run out of oxygen: You have an oxygen meter, but it's not real. "Oxygen" is just Endurance from Skyrim and Fallout 4. A sprint meter, essentially.

You can’t fly to every planet: Saturn for example, you can’t land and you must fly for hours to get closer in which eventually you’ll just clip through the planet as It’s basically a giant prop.

[lelo2play]

Absolutely! When the human race reached the Moon, it was filled with Disney parks and attractions.
When they reach Mars, it will be filled with 7 Star Hotels, 20 Eiffel Towers, 15 Big Ben's, and so on...

Both the Moon and Mars are lovely places to live.

[Jin_Sakai]

Because in real life humans land on a planet with a cutscene and can only explore a 1km barrier.

Obviously he’s figuratively speaking when referring to Disney Land…🙄

[lelo2play]

@Jin_Sakai

Starfield is a game that's suppose to imitate real life, you explore... Lets say in the future you can take a ship and start visiting several unexplored planets. Not taking into account things like gravity, high/low temperatures, breathable air, etc, most of the planets you visit would be uninteresting, barren wolds.
There are other games out there where you can visit many worlds, each filled with lively colors, beautiful landscapes, lots of animals, and so many other things. Starfield isn't that game.

As for invisible walls, it's unfortunate, but like or not most games have invisible walls. Starfield is not the first game with invisible walls, and won't be the last. Played Baldur's Gate 3 last month, it had invisible walls. Played Uncharted 4 PC few months ago, it had invisible walls.

[Palitera]

Wouldn't it be easier to just admit already that they made empty worlds just for marketing's sake, to fool idiots?

"MORE THAN ONE THOUSAND PLANETS TO EXPLORE!!!"

Not only you fell for it, you are fighting for it lol

[neutralgamer1992]

Let’s be real here we play games to get away from reality. So yes give me less planets but all fully exportable and full of interesting content

[lelo2play]

@Jin_Sakai
Bethesda have been saying for ages that most planets from the game were barren and empty. You could visit the planets, but likely find nothing of interest there. If idiots weren't paying attention to Bethesda's words, then it's their own fault for believing something diferent.
Starfield is an RPG with some exploration elements, among other things. If you wanted Starfield to be essentially about exploration, you have the wrong game. So the question is... were you paying attention?

[toutmanifik]

That's real life though. Starfield is a game so I would like to have a little fun with my $70 purchase. Speaking only on the topic of exploration in Starfield.

[raWfodog]

“Played Baldur's Gate 3 last month, it had invisible walls. Played Uncharted 4 PC few months ago, it had invisible walls.”

BG3 and Uncharted 4 devs never intimated that exploration was free roam. Todd Howard’s opening statement in the Starfield Direct suggested exactly that.

[lelo2play]

@mrxo

When someone like you relies on name calling to make a point, just shows off your ignorance, immaturity and lack of intelligence.

[Binarycode]

Nobody has reached the moon, other then rovers. Nobody has ever left LEO.

[Rocketisleague]

You know how other games handle this? You can fly around the planet and spot 'interesting points' and then land there, or else don't land. Its up to you. Its part of the mystery and exploration to be engaged in the seemlessness. What's it called...immersion? Something bethesda tossed away a long time ago

[SyntheticForm]

To be fair, no location should be Disney.

[iEatNapkinz]

I think the point is that the game isn't a real life sinulator. It's a fantasy/sci-fi game that could have been more imaginative with its planets, landscapes, and lore behind those properties

It's definitely not a bad game but it's 100% underwhelming from expectations

[Outside_ofthe_Box]

"You can’t fly to every planet: Saturn for example, you can’t land and you must fly for hours to get closer in which eventually you’ll just clip through the planet as It’s basically a giant prop."

Isn't Saturn just a planet made of gas? So I don't think it has an actual surface you can land on and big gas planets like like that usually crushes whatever ever object penetrates the atmosphere because of the insane pressure.

[Jin_Sakai]

It is but that fact that it’s just a prop you can clip through and not even 3d rendered is ridiculous.

[DOMination-]

I've not played it so I am basing this purely on what you've said - it sounds like it wasn't really intended that the players would visit Saturn so I can understand that decision. Having said that, our you'd think the planets in Sol would have had more effort put into them.

[jwillj2k4]

Not my words but I agree “Don’t talk science landing on gas planets but be okay with your character becoming super human with space magic.”

Nothing in this game is possible it’s all fake we can’t make spaceships, we can’t fly to other planets, we don’t have these make believe guns and suits. It’s a game you should be able to land on ALL types of planets if you have the right ‘make believe’ equipment. Stop being a hypocrite.

[VariantAEC]

@Jin_Sakai
Apparently it is a 3D object with a low resolution image plastered on top of it. Nothing remotely difficult to render at all especially on Xbox Series PS5 consoles and modern PCs.

[Bobertt]

The uproar about the barrier is dumb. I have played it and the area you can walk in is huge i wasted hours exploring it without hitting the boundary. You can easily return to your ship and just fly to another spot on the planet to walk past the boundary. Who cares if you can't walk across an entire planet in one shot you can still explore the entire planet and logically it wouldn't make sense to walk to the other side of a planet and leave your ship behind.

I do agree it sucks you can't fly on the planet but i never expected that from the marketing. I do wish there were vehicles like Mass Effect but i figure that was more for balancing as it's still a Bethesda game at it's core and they probably want you to fight the enemies and not use a vehicle to run them over. Like in Mass effect there was no reason to get out of the vehicle unless it was to pick up an item or enter a building since you could easily kill everyone outside.

I also agree the Oxygen meter is mislabeled but why would we want an actual oxygen tank meter in a game like this? You complain about not being able to walk the entire planet in one go but if they used an actual Oxygen meter you would constantly have to return to the ship to refill the tanks anyway.

As for Saturn it's a gas planet there is literally no solid matter there that's why you can't fly there. I am still early on but as far as i know only it's only the gas planets you can't fly to because that makes sense.

If i had to make some complaints about Starfield it would be about the broken HDR. The way the game doesn't explain or tell you about a lot of abilities/features like the location of the storage on your ship or how you can charge the cutter to do more damage or mine metals way faster. Hell it didn't even tell me i had a scanner i walked around for a long time on Kreet looking for the location for my quest before i clicked the scanner button by accident and found it showed a route to the quest, could highlight items, reveal unknown markers, and fast travel.

[MrNinosan]

No, you can't explore the full planets. You can explore some zones of a planet.
In No Man Sky, you can explore full planets.

Instead of making a very cool looking Starmap, they could've had a list:

Galaxy A:
Planet A:
Location A, B, C

Planet B:
Location A, B, C

Etc, because that's how limited the exploration is.

[porkChop]

It's genuinely hard to take your criticisms seriously when you complain about not being able to land on Saturn, a planet made of gas. From what I understand the only planets you can't land on are exactly that, gas giants. Which makes sense.

[Magatsuhi]

So why bother making it then? Seems like it's just a ploy to be able to say big worlds

[CobraKai]

That’s actually good. Kinda gives that feeling of discovery.

[VersusDMC]

I like how Forespoken (and other games) got spam comments about having an empty world even though it was explained in the game.

But for Starfield it is justified because it's in space?

I guess i shouldn't be surprised about hypocrisy here...it all depends on what system it's on here.

[ravens52]

Funny thing is Forspoken world wasn't empty lol. 🤷🏾 There was an agenda with that game.

[darksky]

I played Forspoken recently and it's a decent game.

[CS7]

Lol. Agenda?

Where was this agenda for FF XVI, God of War, deathloop, returnal, R&C, Horizon, Miles morales, TLOU2, FFVII remake, GOT.

You guys really need to get a grip.

[Binarycode]

Stop making sense.

[OptimusDK]

This willl be a modding heaven gooing forward - and everybody said it was pure stupid to have 1000 planets - but the game is bigger than any bethesda game anyway in regard to the handcrafted planets - the rest is just extra and somthing that can be eveolved over time.

But hey i guess when you can not have something it has to be shit on. As for Forespoken is was a bad game pure and simple and the empty part was not the reason.

[rippermcrip]

No Man's Sky got absolutely destroyed their false promises. A team of 17 people.

Bethesda gets a pass though apparently.

[JEECE]

Even at launch NMS has much more advanced flying mechanics than Starfield, and obviously that game has improved leaps and bounds since then. I already prefer Starfield's on foot segments though.

[badz149]

And Starfield even has the team at DF supporting it! 30fps, all the loadings, lots of broken promises and all...

[anast]

There are no planets in this game. They didn't even make stars in a game called Starfield.

[Christopher]

If you consider a planet to be a whole mass that can be explored freely, sure. But, this is like saying there are not cities in games where you load in and out of city regions. I think this statement is weak, even if I get the intention. But it clouds the true argument on is it truly an exploratory game or just an instance game that has big areas you can walk around in with some POI that add nothing to the story?

[anast]

Todd said the tiles wrap around. They don't. And Hines said that we could explore the whole entire planet. This means that it is a whole entire planet. You can't because there isn't a planet. I didn't set these expectations.

[Hedstrom]

I think it's the general mistake most open world games make. It's a whole lot of nothing. It might sound like a good idea of having this wast world. But they could have made 20 planets filled with life and it would have been a better game. It's like having tv series where they follow someone for 24 hours and you have to watch him sleep for 7, eat breakfast, take a shit and so on. It's just a bad design.

With that said it can still be a great game. Haven't played it. Alot of similar games with open worlds can be good, but in most cases they would be better if they where a bit smaller and more directed.

[Knightofelemia]

Not much of a space explorer if you run into a barriers. And there are planets in the habitable zone like Earth that might support life like Earth. I'll just stick to No Man's Sky and ME for space games.

[Tapani]

Starfield is a disjointed Fallout & Skyrim experience with useless randomly generated places to visit, and unnecessary space combat and ship builder. It seems there are some nice stories here and there in the mix, but the game is not worth the price nor time. There are better stories and experiences out there that cost less and are more robust. If you want something new, Baldur's Gate 3 and Sea of Stars both are overall better games and have more meaningful exploration.

[Inverno]

Problem is that there's an never ending trend of making Empty/lifeless open spaces/worlds in video games, and it's gotten worse.

[-Foxtrot]

I don’t know why they didn’t just make a vast solar system and then also make our solar system a one to explore as end game content

[mkis007]

Because then it would be outer worlds 2.

[mkis007]

Not using a new engine tied their hands. I can't believe they couldn't find creative alternatives to the space aspects of the game.

Top of my head: partially on rails planetary landings, actual planets you can fly to if you wanted to, not just map screen.

Seems like they are still limited by ugridstoload. Like skyrim and fallout.

[specialguest]

I'm just here to complain about your f**ked up ads on N4G. It's worse than ever. If I start to scroll down, the entire page fades into some stupid car ad and there's nothing I can do about it except scroll back to the top which fades back to the N4G page. Fix your G*d Damn ads!!

[Blad3runner00]

You should be using an ad blocker. There is absolutely no reason not to.

[JEECE]

Yep, this site is useless without one.

[lodossrage]

Yeah Blad3 is right

Use that ad blocker here. I don't mind turning it off for a site that DOESN'T abuse ads. But here, yeah ad block is getting used.

[specialguest]

I will be using it now. Thanks

[Armaggedon]

“The world is an illusion exile.”

[hard joe]

beth relying on modders to do their job
again

[gold_drake]

funny cause i remember people shitting on No mans sky like crazy for the exact same reason.

the hypocrisy.

[repsahj]

Even the Planet Earth is a barren planet (not a wasteland). Atleast a wasteland is full ruins.

[ChiefofLoliPolice]

Trying to justify the mediocrity of the exploration huh. Nice try.

[Scarpa123]

Then don't give statements like ""MORE THAN ONE THOUSAND PLANETS TO EXPLORE!!!""

[darksky]

We play video games to have fun. not 'explore' empty bits of so called planets. If they wanted it be a simulator of real life then perhaps not make the Oxygen regenerate like a stamina meter and also don't have any fast travel.

[Crows90]

Except if we ever went to space like in this game...every single planet would be a huge investment for corporations.you bet your ass they would want to claim empty planets asap

It seems to me though that complaints about more to explore seem a bit backwards.

Let's just all get upset about something for the sake of getting upset about something

[sadraiden]

But Disney World is fun. Games should be fun too.

[Antifan]

Imagine shilling this game. Imagine telling us no features is a good thing?

[badz149]

because the world is either DisneyWorld or barren wastelands, no in between. what a pathetic response!

[jznrpg]

It would have been better to have 10 fleshed out planets and maybe 20-30 barren planets instead of 1000 planets that are not planets at all and just blocks. Their design choices are horrible really. Just arbitrary numbers but I would rather actually travel to a small solar system or 2 then 1000 tiles that you fast travel to.

[VariantAEC]

If Starfield was like that it would be seen as a rip-off of Haven: Call of The King, even though the gameplay loop is nothing like H:CoTK. At least Haven ran at 60FPS... on PS2 no less.

[XBManiac]

Sea of thieves begun like this.

[Abear21]

Half of the gameplay moments people wanted are cutscenes. Taking off and landing, exploring dark sides of weird planets, NMS did these moments better but NMS planets are boring to explore too, there’s not enough varying terrain/biomes or mountains and rivers. I would rather have a hyper realistic dense city block where you can interact with anything over an entire universe full of nothing.