Bethesda drastically toned down the punishing planet exploration in Starfield, reveals Todd Howard

Starfield player kneeling on planet looking at sunset
(Image credit scores: Bethesda)

Starfield‘s worlds were initially meant to be far more penalizing for gamers, that is till Bethesda “nerfed the hell out of it,” discloses Todd Howard.

In a meeting with The AIAS Game Maker’s Notebook Podcast, Howard goes over lots of aspects of Starfield’s growth, consisting of the information that the room RPG’s worlds were when far more tough for gamers to make it through on: “So the way the environmental damage works in the game, on planets and on your suit, you have resistances to certain types of atmosphere effects, whether that’s radiation or thermal, etc. and that was a pretty complex system – actually, it was very punitive,” the programmer clarifies. 

Discussing exactly how the system needed to be changed as well as “tuned” by the designers at Bethesda, Howard discloses that “it was a complicated system for players to understand,” therefore “we just nerfed the hell out of it.” Instead of penalizing gamers way too much, the conditions they might obtain from worlds’ ambiences were rather “more in flavor,” Howard states. “it was ‘let’s just dial it down’ because if we dial it way back, it becomes more flavor on the screen than it does a gameplay system,” he proceeds. 

Originally, the Starfield supervisor clarifies, the group desired the RPG to need gamers to make use of numerous spacesuits: “one for high radiation planets, one for really cold planets,” and so on. But, as Howard recognizes currently, Starfield gamers do not require to think of the system that a lot. If this seems like something you would certainly have suched as to see in the game, do not stress, as Howard likewise stated that it “might be something we address going forward.” 

There’s a whole lot to unpick from the Todd Howard meeting, however an additional point that stuck out to us is that Howard in fact had the concept for Starfield back in 2013, as well as pitched it midway via the growth of Fallout 4. As the programmer clarifies: “It was kind of boiling for a while and there was a point in 2013 where we were in the middle of Fallout 4, and that’s usually the time where we’re going to figure out what we’re gonna do next – just for us to have conversations in the studio.” 

Around 2 years prior to Fallout 4 appeared, Howard stated he mosted likely to Robert Altman, the founder of Zenimax Media – Bethesda’s moms and dad firm – as well as pitched Starfield to him after currently trademarking the name, as Howard states: “I was worried that someone else would use the name Starfield in some way.” This is around the exact same time that most of us found out about Starfield considering that followers promptly saw the firm’s most recent hallmark declaring. 

Find out whatever you require to learn about the Starfield Planets with our overview. 

 

Source: gamesradar.com

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