Former Bethesda Designer Explains Starfield's Procedural Generation Shortcomings

Since its launch in 2023, the space-faring RPG Starfield has garnered a reputation as Bethesda's most average offering. Unlike its highly celebrated predecessors, Skyrim and Fallout, Starfield has struggled to achieve the same level of player adoration, even with the developers' subtle hints about upcoming expansions. The core issue, according to a former Bethesda designer, lies in its ambitious yet flawed implementation of procedural generation.

Procedural Generation Hampered Starfield's Potential, Says Ex-Bethesda Designer

Bruce Nesmith, who served as a systems designer on Starfield until a year before its release, recently shared his insights in an interview with FRVR. He asserted that while he considers Starfield a \"good game\" and is proud of the team's efforts, it ultimately fell short of its immense potential. The primary reason, Nesmith explained, was the game's reliance on procedurally generated content, which clashed with the established expectations players hold for a Bethesda role-playing game.

Nesmith acknowledged that the game might have been received differently had it been released by a different studio. However, given Bethesda's legacy with rich, hand-crafted worlds in titles like Skyrim and Fallout, the promise of a vast space exploration game from them carried significant weight. He suggested that the lack of engaging, unique points of interest on the multitude of procedurally generated planets was a major drawback, leading to a sense of monotony for players.

His perspective aligns with initial skepticism from game critics, who questioned the appeal of a thousand explorable planets if many proved to be uninteresting. Nesmith, an enthusiastic space fan and amateur astronomer himself, candidly stated that \"space is inherently boring\" when it comes to game design if not filled with compelling, bespoke content. The absence of diverse, story-generating enemies further compounded this issue, as most encounters involved human adversaries, lacking the variety seen in other Bethesda titles.

Ultimately, Starfield's strength in automated content creation inadvertently became its weakness. The game struggled to provide the immersive and varied exploration that players had come to anticipate from a Bethesda RPG, demonstrating that even with advanced technology, the magic of handcrafted design remains crucial for captivating player experiences.

This discussion highlights a crucial lesson in game development: while procedural generation can offer scale, it must be balanced with meaningful, unique content to truly engage players. The experience of Starfield suggests that simply having a vast number of planets is not enough; each location needs to feel distinct and offer a compelling reason for exploration to live up to player expectations, especially from a studio with Bethesda's esteemed history of world-building.