Starfield designer admits Bethesda's space epic isn't "the same caliber" as Fallout and Elder Scrolls because it's full of procedural generation: "The planets start to feel very samey"

Bethesda Game Studios.

It's impossible for anything – even a game by RPG god Bethesda – to completely live up to humongous expectations, and so 2023 space explorer Starfield isn't an outlier in that sense. But, compared to its siblings Fallout and Elder Scrolls, Starfield has only a mouse-sized portion of the same staying power. One of its designers thinks procedural generation is to blame.

Game designer Bruce Nesmith, a Dungeons & Dragons icon with credits on video games like Oblivion, Skyrim, and Starfield, explains to FRVR in a new interview that Starfield's infamous thousands of planets might as well be empty.