Starfield came out seven months ago, and many gamers still consider this title to be one of the studio’s weakest games. Bethesda’s “dream game” has been met with mixed reactions, earning praise in some circles and a more mixed response in others. But seven months is a long time to think, and Bethesda boss Todd Howard thinks he knows why the space RPG was so divisive: For some players, it simply wasn’t traditional enough for Bethesda.
Speaking to Kinda Funny, Howard said that many people have a very specific set of expectations when it comes to Bethesda games:
We’re seeing a lot of players say, “This is what I want from a Bethesda game, to explore the world in a certain way, and Starfield didn’t give me that. I prefer the way Fallout or Elder Scrolls does it.”
And while Howard thinks that’s fair enough, he says it’s simply not the experience Starfield is designed to provide.
I think for us – especially for me – making a sci-fi game, I want to be able to land on all the planets. I want the game to say yes to us, knowing that this content will be different from what you’ve seen from us before.
It makes sense. Even from the comments and reviews, it was clear that many players came to Starfield expecting some kind of large, continuous world that they could explore in the same way as the Wasteland and Tamriel, and were disappointed to find a lot of relatively small levels separated by loading screens.
However, it is unlikely that the fact that Starfield is not similar to Skyrim or Fallout 4 alone led to the 61% positive reviews on Steam. It wasn’t so much the structure of Starfield that irritated players, but the fact that there was nothing interesting about the structure. Just a lot of very similar planets and a rather banal and predictable plot.
In any case, if your problem with Starfield is that it’s not similar enough to Elder Scrolls or Fallout, Howard isn’t likely to change it.
Howard himself is quite pleased with Starfield, and in particular that it is probably one of Bethesda’s most technically advanced launches. True, this became possible, among other things, due to the release being delayed by as much as 10 months.