Are humans mostly alone in the universe? Todd Howard seems to think so, as the director behind Starfield discussed his latest RPG in a new episode of Kinda Funny Xcast and revealed that while the game will technically feature over 1,000 planets, only “about 10%” of them will have any life on them. This isn’t the greatest news for gamers who were expecting to land on a planet and do more than collect resources and talk to themselves, but Howard suggested that this was actually a great way of making players feel the “magnificent desolation” that comes with landing on another, alien world. Elsewhere in the interview, Howard revealed that Starfield doesn’t have any land vehicles or fishing, something that Skyrim fans might be upset about.
From a Kinda Funny Games transcript:
Obviously it’s procedural, so there’s no way we’re going to go and handcraft an entire planet. What we do is we handcraft individual locations and some of those are placed specifically, [like] the main cities and other quest locations, and then we have a suite of them that are generated or placed when you land depending on that planet.”
…you look at a system, here’s the menu of things you could do…about 10% of those planets have life on them. …if you look at a planet you see the resources it has, things you want, there is, I love the Buzz Aldrin quote, the “magnificent desolation,” I think there’s a certain beauty to landing on those and feeling I’m one of the only people or the only person to ever visit this planet.
…there [are no land vehicles]. ….but we do have the boost pack. You saw some of that in the video and you have skills for the boost pack, so the boost pack almost acts like this vehicle where you can fly through. It’s super fun. And then the low gravity planets are just really, really something special in the game.
Discussion (19 replies)
Join Discussion →That's not exactly the greatest sales pitch. In fact it makes me have serious doubts about wanting to play the game day 1.
So 90% of the game will be tedious resource gathering on barren planets without even having a vehicle? Mass Effect 1 was tedious enough but there were only what 100 planets? And you had the mako to speed up the search process planetside. Not to mention almost every one of them had a pirate outpost or abandoned colony of some sorts.
Maybe they can get some tips from the NMS folks. :ROFLMAO:
I am reserving judgement, and not expecting much.
Ok I will say for mining desolate planets (unless handled a la ME 2, is a mistake. You need some sort of POI on the planets, maybe at least 1 per solar system in question depending on how things are spaced out. (Ha get it... spaced... never mind.)
Having the loop of exploration and discovery is important. You're going to have a LOT of players like me... who ENJOY exploring, but part of that enjoyment is finding the neat or interesting things left behind. Heck if they add some perk overall (Like the Elder Scrolls series often did.) then that's fine.
Alien artifacts, abandoned living places of lost species... unique weapons or stories or artifacts, or even a unique language that tells a story that you have to piece together that turns out to be a rick roll.. it's all good content you can have without a single being to interact with.
But no vehicle... that's a rough field to hoe.
1.) IMHO, since they were creating the universe with AI, the appropriate thing here was to have about 1 in a billion planets have life on it, and provide a way to navigate that endless expanse of space, like scanning for radio signatures, and plotting long distance high speed courses etc. This would have made it more realistic.
2.) Fishing? Seriously? People actually like virtual in game fishing? That was the worst part of recent Far Cry games, and it bored me to tears in Red Dead Redemption 2. I swear to god if I have to play another game where a mission depends on fishing I'll blow my top. I cant believe people actually complain about its absence.
Fishing is bores me to tears enough in real life. Don't make me effing do that shit in a game. Games are supposed to be fun.
Fishing is nice as one of the things you can zone out and just do in a game. fits for some games not for others. This isn't Final Fantasy XIV folks it's supposed to feel more realistic. Evolution of life on different worlds may be different and no fish involved. Perhaps it's all insectoid?
Though a fully aquatic world would be neat to visit.
"How many atmosphere's his this ship rated for any way?"
"Oh... 0 or 1."
The only thing worse than fishing in games, is fishing in real life. The thing I hate most in life is waiting, and 99.999% of fishing is waiting.
... and drinking beer - you're forgetting the most important and redeeming part
Fishing in games is grind.
Can desolate planets be made not desolate in the game? That would be fine too.
If it's anything like their other games, modders will have a HUGE world (universe) to build whatever they dream in the game. Give the game a few years and modders will have most of those planets with life, colonies, etc...
...at least I hope they can.
As for the ground vehicle thing. As long as you can fly your ship within' the planet's atmosphere and land wherever you want I'm not sure it'll be that big of an issue. You can make your own ships. So I am wondering if you could make a large ship for traveling from planet to planet with a smaller ship on board that you can take out to explore with? That would be cool.
Then why not ignore the fishing part and just drink beer? You aren't fooling anybody:
Where are you going, drinking again?
No, honey I'm going fishing!
That is exactly it right there!
There's a certain thrill that comes from that massive tug on your line, as a reward for patience and skill, especially when you're surrounded by nature and the catch can mean the difference between dinner and going to bed hungry. Catching rusty beer cans or three-headed bass from an urban toxic dump is slightly less appealing.
How does one explain any pleasure in life? Fishing triggers our primitive reward systems. I enjoyed it as a kid. As an adult, I do my fishing at the grocery store.
I don't remember fishing (as in "angling") being present at all in Skyrim. It's been ages since I've played, but I vaguely recall an option to create fish hatcheries and/or snatch them from pools of water — something like that. I had all the DLC from the Legendary Edition.
The barren planets sound like a modder's dream. It's a feature. ;)
I hope that the camera and targeting system have been reworked since Skyrim. The first-person view felt too restrictive and awkward, and adjusting the FOV didn't really help much. I much prefer playing from a third-person perspective, and only switching to a first-person view when performing activities such as aiming ranged weapons. I've played other games that handle that more gracefully by automatically adjusting the camera during ranged weapon use. Some of the awkwardness may be related to past experience and lack of exposure to its predecessors or similar games. But the melee combat in Skyrim was just awful, and the friendly fire system was just plain broken. Your companions would pick up a wand and start lobbing fireballs during combat, and the player received the blame for any mishaps. Entire villages would turn hostile, as if the player had any say in the matter. I also couldn't stand that forced vampire (Serena?) companion. ?♀️ Wanted to put a stake through her heart. Sorry... Getting a bit off topic here.
Yall need to go touch some grass....or water.
I love fishing. Just got back from 6 days of fishing in Myrtle Beach.