Starfield interview: ex Bethesda dev on scale, building a new universe | Biden News

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We had the opportunity to interview Starfield, which could very well be the greatest work of Bethesda’s RPG games, as the studio steps out from behind the likes of Fallout and The Elder Scrolls to develop a new universe that redefines its open-world games to be. more open-universe, with thousands of planets to explore. This anticipation prompted us to chat with an ex-Bethesda developer who left Bethesda on his own last year and worked on Starfield for quite some time.

This person is Nate Purkeypile, founder of Just Purkey Games and developer for 17 years, 14 of which were spent at Bethesda from Fallout 3 to Starfield, as an artist on many projects. Of course, Purkeypile couldn’t go into too much detail about Starfield, due to contracts and the fact that it isn’t released until next year, but he did give us some interesting information about the space project.

When it comes to Starfield’s size, Purkeypile says it’s not only the biggest game Bethesda has ever made, but also the one that required the biggest team as well.

“The scope of that project is the main thing that’s different, because, you know, Fallout 3, Skyrim, Fallout 4, that was all one team. Fallout 76, that was two mostly, we had some help from Montreal, but it was mostly the Austin and Maryland. [Bethesda] studios working together.

“But yeah, Starfield is a much bigger project, it’s like 500 people or something on the team, as I think. [Fallout] 76 was maybe 200, tops,” Purkeypile added, saying the colossal size of the development team was one of the reasons he left and decided to make games on his own.

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Purkeypile also said that the biggest challenge faced during the development of Starfield while he was there – remember a lot about the game could have changed since he left – was the effort and detail needed to put in to make an entirely new fictional universe.

“It’s not always solved problems of how things should look,” explains Purkeypile, “Which can be so many separate things, like what shape are the metal panels? How do they connect things together? What colors do you use? What materials do they have? How do you makes a difference between all these different areas? So that’s a lot more difficult versus if you asked me, hey, make another next game.

“You have to figure it all out, and there’s also this extra-Polish fiction to figure out. You’d be shocked at how many metal panels they did in concept,” Purkeypile jokingly added.

Starfield will be big, so big in fact that it will have 1,000 planets to explore that can be landed anywhere. We had a few questions for Purkeypile about how this was achieved, because while it was previously mentioned by director Tod Howard that procedural generation is involved with the 100+ solar systems, we don’t know exactly how.

“I can’t really get into the technical details of it,” says Purkypile, “the map of [Fallout] 76 is like twice the size of Skyrim or so, and that was a lot of work for people, but yeah, it doesn’t scale. Even if you wanted to hire outsourcing, you would have to hire, like, a country. Realistically, it’s a fraction of that team actually [working] on planets.”

Purkeypile didn’t go into how Bethesda created these planets specifically, but it’s interesting to hear that the studio came up with some kind of creative solution that allows so many to be developed for Starfield, while still feeling a bit unique.

Starfield New Atlantis: a tall, glass spire rises from the cityscape, with the letters

We also talked about the Starfield reveal and the, let’s be blunt, lackluster The Elder Scrolls 6 reveal. Purkeypile noted that while nothing was shown about the fantasy game, Starfield was shown and released in part to set expectations for how long it will be until The Elder Scrolls 6 actually releases.

“So they have to be like, ‘look, we’re going to set expectations.’ Now [it’s been] over 10 years, that’s pretty unheard of to go that long without a sequel.” He continues, “There’s definitely Elder Scrolls Online, but frankly, I look at that as the separate market for the MMO group. I think letting people know it’s going to take a while is definitely part of it,” Purkeypile says.

So, while we’re all waiting for Starfield, hopefully Purkeypile’s time in the game can tide us over, even if he couldn’t say too much about the ins and outs of the next Bethesda game. We also have much more on the way from our interview with Purkeypile about the Fallout series and Skyrim, and even some details on his upcoming solo-developed mystical hunting game, The Unseen Axis, which you can find on Steam. Purkeypile’s Twitter is also full of interesting behind-the-scenes looks at game development, so be sure to give him a follow to learn about how games are made.

If you want to know even more about the game outside of this Starfield interview, we’ve got an introduction to Starfield ship builds, details on the Starfield Game Pass release, and everything you need to know about the Starfield release date and the latest news too . .



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