” Starfield will be exactly the same as our previous games: empty and boring “. This is essentially what it is possible to read through Todd Howard’s answers in an interview on IGNabout the thousand planets of Starfield.
As there was still a little bad faith at the bottom of our drawers, we took it out to try to interpret the words of the sulphurous as well as possible. game director. Embark with us on a journey to the depths of the known and above all unknown universe!
We do a lot of procedural generation [in Starfield], but I would keep in mind that we’ve always done that,” Howard explained. “It’s a big part of Skyrim in terms of questing and some other things we do. We generate landscape using procedural systems, so we’ve always kind of worked on it. [The Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall is] one we look at a lot in terms of game flow. And we had been developing some procedural technology and doing some prototypes, and it really started coming to a head with Starfield, in that we think we can do this.
“But why are you bothering us with procedural generation in Starfield? We’ve always used it since at least Daggerfall, that ridiculously huge and empty game. And it’s the same for stupid quests in Skyrim, what do you think? »
So it starts with: Can you even pull it off, visually? You know, a planet. And a planet by itself, if you think about it in a game concept, just one planet is infinitely big if you’re going to do it in some realistic fashion. So once you’re dealing with scale like that, and procedural systems, the difference between, say, one planet that has some variation on it, and a hundred planets, or a thousand planets, it’s actually not that big of a leap, if that makes sense – once you have good systems working for that.
“Already, a planet is infinitely too big to make something of global interest out of it, so once that’s done, why not generate 999 others on the same basis? It does not cost more and it makes the pigeons foam! »
I should also add that we have done more handcrafting in this game, content-wise, than any game we’ve done. We’re [at] over 200,000 lines of dialogue, so we still do a lot of handcrafting and if people just want to do what they’re used to in our games, and follow a main quest, and do the questlines, you’re gonna see what you’ d kind of expect from us. But then you have this whole other part of, ‘Well I’m just going to wander this planet, and it’s going to provide some gameplay, and some random content, and those kinds of things.’ Kind of like a Daggerfall would, if you go way back.
“Well, we’ve written over 200,000 lines of dialogue, so we’re doing a lot of handwork and the quests will be the same style as in our previous games. But we also wanted to allow the player to explore the same planet a thousand times with random content, a bit like in Daggerfall, this paragon of boredom. »
We’re also careful to let you know that’s what [that procedural content] is. So if you look at space, you know there are a lot of ice balls in space, so that was one of our big design considerations on this game is, ‘What’s fun about an ice ball?’ And it’s OK sometimes if ice balls aren’t- it is what it is. We’d rather have them and say yes to you, ‘Hey, you can land on this.’ Here are the resources, you can survey it, and then you can land and spend ten minutes there and be like, ‘OK, now I’m going to leave and go back to the other planet that has all this other content on it, and I’m going to follow this questline.
“As we develop the game, we know what is supposed to be fun or not. Icy fucking rocks aren’t, we hate them. You can go there anyway to piss off ten minutes, but you’ll soon be back following our great quests on planets that don’t have zero ice. »
So we’re pretty careful about saying, ‘Here’s where the fun is, here’s this kind of content,’ but still say yes to the player and, ‘You want to go land on that weird planet, check it out, and build an outpost, and live your life there, and watch the sunset because you like the view of the moons there? Go for it.’ We love that stuff.
“So listen up when people tell you it’s fun, and we’ll say it every time, until you’re having fun. It’s fun there! Look here, it’s fun! Oh, and there’s content on your left! But you can also land on a planet completely screwed up by our algorithm, build an outpost and be bored with nothing to do. We love that at Bethesda. »
This concludes the interview and our little translation session, we hope you enjoyed it. You can send your requests for work to the editorial staff, we will give you a friendly price. You can also find the original article at IGNbut he will probably be a little more biased, not everyone has the same ethics as here at NoFrag.
In the meantime, Starfield is scheduled for 2023, and like Redfall, owners of a Playstation console can only see with rage their little buddies on Xbox and PC enjoying its thousand planets.
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