Nate Purkeypile, a former Bethesda developer who contributed to titles like Skyrim, Fallout 3, Fallout 4, and Fallout 76, has shared his perspective on how Starfield's design could have been approached differently, suggesting a focus on fewer, more bespoke planets would have yielded a better result. Purkeypile, who spent 14 years at Bethesda before leaving in 2021, was a lead lighting artist and senior world artist on Starfield prior to his departure.
Purkeypile voiced concerns internally about the game's target of 1,000 planets, a figure heavily promoted before Starfield's launch. While Bethesda's Todd Howard explained that many of these planets would be barren and serve resource-gathering purposes, with handcrafted locations placed within them, Purkeypile argues this approach led to a significant issue: repetitive content. He observed the reuse of identical dungeon layouts even during the main quest, likening the method to stitching together pre-made chunks rather than true procedural generation.
"If I was in charge of Starfield, I would have not done it that way at all," Purkeypile stated in an interview with The Examined Game. "I would have done a handful of planets with bespoke layouts." He drew parallels to the early Mass Effect games, where procedural planets also suffered from a lack of unique content. According to Purkeypile, to justify a thousand planets, the game would need to generate genuinely unique content akin to No Man's Sky, rather than rearranging existing assets.
This design philosophy, he believes, contributed to Starfield not reaching the critical acclaim of Bethesda's earlier Elder Scrolls and Fallout titles. Purkeypile noted that the vastness of cities like New Atlantis felt disconnected from their surroundings, with little outside the urban centers, suggesting a lack of environmental coherence due to time and resources being spread too thin across numerous planets. "Because you go to the major city in Starfield and it's huge, but then outside the city, there's nothing," he explained. "And it's like, this doesn't even make sense as a world."
Purkeypile's critique echoes sentiments from other former Bethesda developers. Bruce Nesmith, lead designer on Skyrim and senior designer on Starfield, previously suggested a focus on around two dozen systems instead of the 120 ultimately included. Nesmith argued that the effort required to build diverse planetary assets for one solar system meant that replicating this across many systems offered diminishing returns.
Despite mixed reception, Bethesda Game Studios has indicated Starfield remains a key part of its future. Todd Howard recently communicated to fans that the game has surpassed 17 million players and nearly a billion hours played. The studio plans to continue expanding the game with new stories, gameplay improvements, and the upcoming Starborn DLC in 2027, while also focusing on The Elder Scrolls 6.