Will the upcoming sci-fi game Starfield be an empty universe? Statements by Todd Howard astonish the community. Read everything about it.
Starfield might be the most awaited sci-fi game in years. The newest Bethesda project promises a whole universe for you to travel and discover. As well as nearly a thousand of different planets like gas giants or luscious jungle worlds.
In a video interview with Kinda Funny Games, Bethesda's Todd Howard revealed, that only 10% of these planets will have life on them. So will Starfield be a lifeless universe?
Starfield: A Lifeless Universe?
First of all, it's of course realistic that not every world in Starfield will be populated, just like in real life. And most likely there will still be more than enough to do and to explore on the 100 worlds with life on them. But won't it feel empty in a universe where only 100 out of 1000 planets will have life on them? Not if Todd Howard has his way.
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In the interview, Howard talked about the procedure behind the universe-creation and promised that in Starfield even the empty planets will have a purpose and some of them might not be that empty.
Obviously it's procedural okay, so there's no way we're going to go and handcraft an entire planet. What we do is we handcraft individual locations and some of those are placed specifically, obviously the main cities and other quest locations. And then we have a suite of them that are generated or placed when you land, depending on that planet.
So, as Howard describes it, no planet (populated or not) will feel the same. On some Ice worlds, you might encounter different things than on the other ones. Also, different resources are meant to be gathered on different planet types, so that every planet has at least a meaning.
I think it is a moment when you land on some of these barren planets, and again we will generate certain things for you to find on them. But if you look at a planet, you see the resources, it has things you want.
Conclusion:
Most likely, there will be a time in Starfield when you haven't encountered a single soul for some hours and all the planets are looking the same – at least from space. But the Starfield universe won't be empty of new things to discover or resources to mine.
But it might feel lifeless, since there are only about 100 Planets with a population. And it wasn't said, how big these populations might be. Could be a megacity with billions of inhabitants, or just a little mining station with 10 souls in there.
It will be interesting to see how the community will react to this, once the game has been released. And if there will be enough to discover and to do, to replace the missing "life" on most of the worlds.
Empty? No! Lifeless? Maybe sometimes.