Ex-Starfield lead looks at the open-world game boom and says "you can see Dark Souls and Elden Ring being a secondary trend: let's make third-person action combat really hard"

House Va'ruun worshippers in Starfield Shattered Space.

If you've ever wondered why, every few years, lots of games start having similar mechanics, Starfield's lead designer, Will Shen, has some answers for you.

Like any artistic medium, video games have trends. They're slower to catch on to new ideas than films or paintings because development takes half a dozen years, but the trends are easy to spot once you start looking.