Starfield has 'Only' a 1000 Planets Because Bethesda Held Back
'There are supposed to be a thousand planets in Starfield,' Bethesda's Todd Howard once said. Now he added that there could have been many more, but there were two reasons why the studio gave up on increasing their number.
The nearly three-hour interview, which Todd Howard, head of Bethesda, gave to Lex Fridman as part of his podcast (below), was packed with many more interesting facts about Starfield, than can be gleaned in a short amount of time. Yesterday, we focused on why Howard claims that the lack of PS5 edition will benefit the game. Today, however, we will expand on the topic of the planets to which the player will be able to go.
A few months ago, Howard assured that Starfield will offer a thousand of them. However, it turns out that Bethesda's initial plans called for a much higher number of globes. We don't know what specific number - but a thousand has already raised concerns among fans that the terrains are too repetitive.
Todd Howard admitted that making each planet available in the game seem unique was a very difficult task. He pointed out that naming them and creating descriptions for them was equally onerous. These two reasons were why Starfield ended up with "only" a thousand of them.
We also learned something about the way we will traverse the various planets.
- Different types of spacesuits, adapted to their atmospheres, will prove indispensable. One outfit is designed to enable us to survive on fiery planets, and another on icy or toxic ones.
- The surface of each planet is to be made of a kind of slab - just like the terrains in other Bethesda games - in which spherical shapes of various sizes are "wrapped".
- All planets will move in their own orbits. We can also dig through the celestial bodies in search of valuable resources.
Starfield is scheduled to be released in 2023. The title is being developed for PC and Xbox Series X and S.
