Bethesda Veteran Explains Why Studio Should Not Have Developed Starfield

The concept of Starfield was too ambitious for Bethesda Game Studios.

A former Bethesda Game Studios designer recently shared memories of working on Starfield in an interview, stating that the action role-playing game turned out too massive and ambitious for the studio.

Speaking with FRVR, Kurt Kuhlmann explained that Starfield is the first game developed by Bethesda with multiple studios involved simultaneously. The team grew to more than 500 people.

Kurt explained that as a result, tasks that used to be straightforward, such as designing a dungeon, began to take significantly more time. For comparison, the core team for Fallout 4 consisted of only about 150 people.

As an example, the developer discussed the creation of Starfield’s lighting. The game used an extremely complex solution that required many passes even when making minor adjustments.

Animations faced similar difficulties, as the team realized that creating a single new creature took two to three times longer, resulting in fewer creatures than originally planned.

Kurt likes the concept of combining procedurally generated planets, but notes that problems arise if a game lacks sufficient content. He stated that for such a system to work and stay interesting, a massive amount of content is required so that players do not keep running into the same things.

Developers also had to build many elements from scratch in Starfield, with Kurt noting that Bethesda had never created a game with vehicles before.

Kurt Kuhlmann believes Bethesda should not have started developing Starfield because it was too ambitious and massive a project for the studio: