At the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco on Tuesday, Shen and former Fallout 76 lead level designer Daryl Brigner gave a joint talk about the importance of collaboration when it comes to level and quest design. The two developers worked together for nearly 15 years on Bethesda RPGs like Skyrim, Fallout 4, and Fallout 76. Both have since left the company: Shen is now lead content designer for Something Wicked Games, and Brigner is world director for Soft Rains—both new studios created by industry veterans.
During the talk, Shen and Brigner discussed the design of a couple of memorable quests from Skyrim and Fallout 4, like House of Horrors, where the player investigates a haunted house, and Last Voyage of the U.S.S. Constitution, where robots enlist the player to return an 18th century naval frigate to the sea. Near the end of the talk, Shen spoke about the final quest of Starfield—specifically, what it was lacking.
Part of the issue, Shen said, was the sheer size of the team working on Starfield. Skyrim's development team was around 100 people, which made collaboration between different departments easier. That team size grew to about 150 for Fallout 4, then over 350 for Fallout 76, and 500+ for Starfield. That's not just Bethesda Game Studios but outside developers like Machine Games, Nobody Studios, Arkane, Snowed In, and The Forge Interactive.
via PCGamer
