Only 10% of Starfield’s 1,000 planets will support life.
Starfield from Bethesda offers players an expansive galaxy to discover, and we couldn’t be more eager to experience its arrival! We cannot wait for its debut!
Recent announcements at Xbox Games Showcase included not only an eye-catching new gameplay trailer for Starfield Direct event by Bethesda developers but also an in-depth 45 minute deep dive from them as well as their gameplay trailer at Xbox Games Showcase. If your excitement level wasn’t already sky high for Starfield Direct then its dedicated event is sure to do that and more! As with other Bethesda RPGs, players are encouraged to explore, embark upon epic quests, interact with NPCs, and make story-defining choices all while engaging in combat with enemies as part of an RPG adventurer experience!
One of the draws of Starfield lies in its impressive size – not only will it feature Bethesda’s largest city ever created but there will be over 1,000 planets available to explore as well. However, some players were concerned that most would just be procedurally generated locations devoid of life and character.
As reported by IGN (via Kinda Funny Games), Bethesda CEO Todd Howard has addressed that concern by confirming that only 10% of planets will feature life. While this might initially seem discouraging, consider this: If all 1000 planets had life – that would require incredible processing power and may lead to bugs or glitches that affect performance – even at 10% that’s over 100 planets with life which in themselves would make for impressive visuals in any RPG game containing over 100 cities that might feature life – impressive indeed!
“For us, it’s about giving players options when exploring a system,” explained Howard. “These could include visiting barren planets that only exist to collect resources or planets with major cities that provide players with opportunities to progress their storyline further.”
“Obviously it’s procedural so there’s no point trying to handcraft an entire planet by hand; however, what we do instead is handcraft individual locations for cities or quest locations specifically placed there as part of their creation, while having another set generated or placed upon landfall depending on that planet.”
As reported previously, Starfield is becoming so incredibly popular, it is convincing players to purchase Xbox Series X|S consoles on its own merit alone. Unfortunately, according to FTC complaints it damages Microsoft’s attempts at acquiring Activision Blizzard by making Starfield console exclusive.
Starfield will launch on September 6, 2023 for PC and Xbox Series X|S. It will also make an initial debut appearance on Xbox Game Pass which soon thereafter will experience an increased price point.
