If you're itching to hop into Bethesda's upcoming outer space-themed RPG Starfield and meet with the residents of its more than 1,000 different planets, you may want to cool your jets, as Executive Producer Todd Howard has revealed that only about 10% of those planets will be capable of sustaining life.

"For us, we view it as giving you, when you look at a system, here's the menu of things you can do," Howard said Thusday while appearing on the Kinda Funny Xcast."And like science, we're pushing it. About 10% of those planets have life on them, okay? We're pushing it to the edge of what do people think, what planets are in that Goldilocks zone versus planets that have resources."

This news from Howard follows up on the recent Starfield Direct showcase, in which Lead Technical Producer,Jean-Francois Levesque revealed that most of the game's planets will be procedurally generated as the player first approaches them, making them different for every player. Howard clarified a bit on how that procedural generation will play out, indicating that there are some set locations that will be the same every time, while most of a planet's resources will be spread out procedurally as determined by the specific planet on which you're landing. "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," he said Thursday. However, as Levesque had noted previously, side quests will be placed in different locations for every player.

It's no secret that Starfield's developers have been drawing inspiration from similar space-based resource-gathering game No Man's Sky, which hosts more than 18.4 quintillion procedurally generated planets (although those planets were generated before the game's release, so they'll always be the same for every player at the start of a solo game). While No Man's sky includes some barren worlds, where there's limited atmosphere and gravity and no plant or animal life — save for the scorpion-like hostile species that emerges from whispering eggs — barren planets are relatively rare, as opposed to in Starfield, where they'll apparently comprise 90 percent of the celestial bodies in explorable space.



As for the barren planets in Starfield, Howard said the team at Bethesda is making sure that they'll still have valuable resources that will make visiting them worthwhile, but more than that, there will be a special feeling that comes from landing on them. Drawing inspiration from astronaut Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, the second person to walk on the moon, Howard brought up his description of the "magnificent desolation" of the experience. "I think there's a certain beauty in landing on those and feeling 'I'm one of the only people or the only person ever [to] visit this planet' ... We hope everybody enjoys it for what it is, but it is an exploration different that what we've had," he explained.

Whether you're looking forward to interacting with bustling cities of interstellar life or finding your way through the desolation of dead planets, you'll get your chance when Starfield releases on the Xbox Series X|S and PC on September 6. You can download the latest Starfield Trainers and cheats from WeMod.

Posted: Jun 25, 2023 12:25 pm
Last Updated: Jun 26, 2023 10:32 pm
Related Forum: Xbox Forum

Source: https://www.dualshockers.com/most-of-starfields-planets-will-be-devoid-of-life/