Bethesda designer comments on decision to have more than 100 solar systems "Making hundreds of them isnt that much of extra work"

[John Elden Ring]

Having recently appeared on the MinnMax podcast, former Bethesda designer Bruce Nesmith was asked about the decision for limited exploration. Although he initially suggested making just a few dozen, he says the studio used the logic that once you create a solar system, it's easy to replicate and create hundreds of them.

There was a lot of discussion about the scope of Starfield. At one point I said, "I bet this game would be a lot better if we restricted ourselves to about 20 solar systems." However, a very legitimate point has been made that once you make one solar system, making 100 of them isn't that much extra work.

You have to know how to create a planet, so that people can walk around it. You have to have various objects, shape lives to interact with, rocks, all of that. You have the ice worlds, the crater worlds. You have to have all this variety. Just by making our own solar system, all that variety, you've done 90% of the work for the rest [of the systems].

According to Bruce, the same was true for planets. Once Bethesda created the right formula on one planet, it was enough to apply the same process to hundreds of planets spread across all solar systems.

Todd basically pulled the number 100 for the number of solar systems out of thin air. All the major activities happen in these 20 solar systems and the rest is open space, but people love our huge games, they love this open area to explore. So let's give it to them.

So it came down to "How do we make exploration meaningful?" And again, you only have to succeed on one planet, once you get the formula right, you have the formula for all the planets.

Bruce says development comes down to choices. Instead of giving players complete freedom in space, she preferred to choose to focus on other parts, such as creating ships.

The designer states that they could have given some ready-made ships for players to acquire throughout the game, but they preferred to bring a complex creation system. Bruce says she was very happy with the excellent reception the creator had in the community, as it was one of the aspects she worked on before leaving the studio.

You have to make hard choices and I think some of the exploration elements didn't do as well as they could have because they decided to make other choices. And make no mistake, every studio on the planet knows the choices they are making. They know what players will complain about.Studios know 90% of the bugs that games are released with, they're just backed up against the wall. The same goes for game functions.

 

[Nimrota]

Even if it isn't "that much extra work" it is still extra work that could have been directed elsewhere. Saying that the scale of the effort used to create the 1000 dead planets was less than people think isn't really making the game look good, it makes it look weak. Why did they make 1000 planets? Well, it's not that hard to actually. Nothing to do with creative decision to have that scope, or design principles that really come into their own at that scale, it's just not that much effort to have a 1000 instead of 100, and 1000>100 so of course it's better, right? That a designer comes out with this really illustrates the problems innate to Bethesda IMO. Starfield was rightly criticised for failing in many ways, and all the designers can think in defense is that it wasn't that hard for them to fail 1000 ways, actually.

Todd basically pulled the number 100 for the number of solar systems out of thin air. All the major activities happen in these 20 solar systems and the rest is open space, but people love our huge games, they love this open area to explore. So let's give it to them.

This is funny because people hate it. Being a good designer isn't about giving people what they want or love, it's about giving them something they didn't know they wanted or needed. BG3 showed this to many people, but Starfield didn't. While the fanboys were cheering on 1000 empty planets before release, they started to realise it was shit after release. I would say the majority of Starfield "fans" probably didn't actually want the game to be like this, but Todd doesn't have the ability to evolve beyond their base expectations.

 

[Zzero]

Wait, is Bruce a girl? Whats up with the hers used in the op?


Edit: Googled it. Bruce is definitely a guy. I am betting a shitty AI wrote the article.

 

[KiryuRealty]

Having recently appeared on the MinnMax podcast, former Bethesda designer Bruce Nesmith was asked about the decision for limited exploration. Although he initially suggested making just a few dozen, he says the studio used the logic that once you create a solar system, it's easy to replicate and create hundreds of them.





According to Bruce, the same was true for planets. Once Bethesda created the right formula on one planet, it was enough to apply the same process to hundreds of planets spread across all solar systems.



Bruce says development comes down to choices. Instead of giving players complete freedom in space, she preferred to choose to focus on other parts, such as creating ships.

The designer states that they could have given some ready-made ships for players to acquire throughout the game, but they preferred to bring a complex creation system. Bruce says she was very happy with the excellent reception the creator had in the community, as it was one of the aspects she worked on before leaving the studio.

This guy should have a talk with Chris Roberts.