With less than three weeks left of Starfields release, I thought I’d give my own personal take on what might come of it.
I’m a huge space nerd. Love Space games, and love it in real life. KSP is one of my favorite games. No Mans Sky was what I dreamed of, and then on release…it was a mess. Tried to get into it now, and I WANT to like it. It’s clearly had effort put into it. But the core problems are still there. The main one being: Procedural generation.
No Mans Sky feels like a mile wide and an inch deep even now. The planets lack variety. It’s pretty much a single biome across the entire system. The outposts look almost the same. Landmarks are the same. Creatures are the same. It makes no sense. Of course, that’s due to the procedural generation. And it shows. I could go on about how the story and side quests are uninteresting and frankly, lazy. But that’s besides the point. Even if it’s a core issue. I would rather have two or three massive, full scale solar systems with a couple of planets that are hand crafted and have a TON of work done to them. With, you know, actual biomes and some dead ones sprinkled in.
Thing is, Bethesda has been experimenting with radial quests and procedural generation for over a decade now. They have shown they care about detail and substance. They know what players look for. They’re not gonna implement a half baked system and do what NMS did. Because we all know how that turned out. And to me, it sounds like they clearly believe this system is ready now. After all, while the radial quests in Skyrim were not perfect, (Dark Brotherhood Forever), they were pretty good in moderation. And that was on 7th gen hardware. In any case, we’re still getting a full scale solar system (or at least a couple?) that are in fact, hand crafted. It’s exciting to say the least.
So while I don’t think Starfield is going to change the industry, and I fully expect bugs, I do think this is going to be the best example of procedural generation going forward and what it CAN do for future titles. Whether from Bethesda, or other developers. The main thing here I’d like to point out is that Bethesda isn’t looking at procedural generation as a core mechanic. They see it as a TOOL. And that’s what it should be across the board. I fully expect players to not go full on exploring towards other star systems until late in the game which will take a bit. Hand crafted is still the most important aspect as it should be. But if done right, I believe it could serve well for replayability for years to come.
People give a lot of shit to BGS for Fallout 76. But remember this. The game was fixed. And every game before it has been acclaimed. Fallout 4 was a bit disappointing for most and I agree, but I do think the mods made up for it and the combat was a big step up versus Fallout 3. It was the weakest title, for a BGS game. Sure. But even then, it was VERY good compared to what was out at the time. They obviously still know what they’re doing unlike other developers now.
Bethesda’s approach is more functional and it allows them to throw in like a hundred odd dungeons but that’s a ton of work to make all of them unique and interesting.
I would slim down the number of dungeons to maybe around thirty to forty. Means that each one becomes more memorable and seeing one inofitself is eventful. By cutting down on the dungeons, you get a few more bonuses, you can put more thought into what kind of loot you would get from it. You can frame everything around the dungeon; what kinds of enemies you’d face, the armour they’re wearing, the weapons they’re using, the spells they’re casting, the items and furniture dotted around or even the environment itself.
In that way, each dungeon becomes its own self-contained experience rather than the _n_th iteration of the same experience. Once you’ve done Bleak Falls Barrow, it’s unlikely the rest of the dungeons will be any different (aside from dwarven ruins which are different to Nord ruins but they suffer from the same issues).
There’s no reason you can’t flesh out a dungeon based on hints given in a quest. So Bleak Falls Barrow would probably be the most boring dungeon of the lot but to someone who’s never experienced Skyrim, it’s new and it sets the stage for other dungeons. There you establish who might be buried in those tombs or if you don’t know, then you can go down and maybe read old books that talk about who was buried there. Say one Draugr has a little diary on him, talking about a thief that left him for dead. You might find that thief later down the lane but he died from walking into a trap which can also serve the dual purpose of teaching the player “hey, there are traps to prevent people from coming down and looting the place”. You can also look at adding a couple of dead grave robbers who allude to the Draugr Lord at the end of the dungeon.
These are a couple of things I’ve just come up with off the top of my head but the TLDR is: "Ask yourself the questions, how can I make this dungeon feel different? Who might be down here? Why are they down here? What did they leave behind? What was taken?