‘Starfield’ Boss Defends Game’s Disappointing 30 FPS
Starfield has more and less than fans originally thought it would.
Bethesda Softworks is the company most known for publishing the modern Fallout game, Doom, Wolfenstein, and the Elder Scrolls series. E3 2018 saw Bethesda reveal a brand new IP for the first time in 25 years exciting many of their fans. The IP would be called Starfield and little was known about it during the announcement except that it could be like Skyrim or Fallout in space.
Since then, Bethesda has been releasing info on the game like its release date and even recently had an in-depth Starfield Direct recently. This in-depth promised big locations, plenty of worlds, a story, and a ton of customization options ranging from characters to ships. It also revealed the game would be locked at 30 FPS on consoles which disappointed people. Todd Howard has some more info for people before the game releases in September.
Todd Howard Explains It All
Starfield Game Director, and long-time executive producer for Bethesda, Todd Howard sat down with Kinda Funny on their latest Kinda Funny Xcast to discuss and answer questions about the game. The main thing he talks about is the 30 FPS controversy and why Starfield can’t go past it.
Other games have been getting blasted for not having 60 FPS as an option in this new console generation. It’s considered one of the big new things since graphics can only get so much better nowadays and ray tracing isn’t as interesting to some.
Howard explained the reason for the game not being able to go above 30 FPS is that they would have had to remove features from the game. So it isn’t just optimization issues but just cramming as much as possible into the game. The game will need to run smoothly with all the new features and anything less is unacceptable to him and the team. Howard talked about some of the features and, well, lack of some.
The Good, the Bad, and the Weird of Starfield
The game’s new features that were not mentioned before that are pretty good are things like looting armor, able to contract infections and needing to recover from them, and multiple biomes to explore on the planets. He also emphasized that you can visit Earth and our Solar System to explore, so feel free to visit any of the planets you have learned about over the years in school.
Howard also emphasized the crew you can assemble as being “awesome.” He hinted you can play the game without some after being asked if the entire crew could be robots and he said “technically yes” which means there is either more than one robot companion or you could just not take others with you except the robot.
The game also will be sporting tons of side quests that will not all overlap, so you will have plenty to do with your crew. Players can also sell “planetary data” they collect for extra cash in the game to customize any ships they register in the game.
via Bethesda
The bad, in my opinion, is that the game’s 1000+ planets will only have about 10% of actual life. Howard explains that since many of them are procedurally generated, they won’t be able to make sure all the planets would have life. This way you can visit a lot of worlds purely for getting resources for your character.
“Obviously it’s procedural, 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, 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.”
“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.”
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via Bethesda
Howard also explained that the game would have no land vehicles to explore the planets you visit. This means you will have to walk most of it or use a jetpack on your back that boosts you around. It is upgradeable, so it should make it possible to not need the idea of a vehicle.
Since only 10% of the planets have life, you may not want to explore some anyways once you get what you need. One of the hosts asked if you could do things like fishing on planets and Howard emphasized there is not anything like that in the game. He did talk about the possibility of adding it in later like they did with Skyrim.
“When you’re doing a game like this or the games that we have done, we ask all the same questions,…And it’s about how do we say ‘yes’ as much as possible. Like, ‘should you fish?’ After a while we finally added it to Skyrim. So that’s what’s great about role-playing games in general. They’re not defined by a certain feature set.”
via Bethesda
The weird is that out of all the thousands of NPCs you can encounter, you can only romance 4 characters. Not all games need romance options and I get that but when given the option in a giant game like this, I feel like you should have bumped up those numbers. It looks like the main reason is it is doing what Mass Effect did which is only romancing crew members in the game. It also probably comes down to voice acting as well, so it limits what can be done in a game this big, unlike something like Fable 2 that let you romance damn near anyone.
Starfield is still an awe-inspiring game and many fans of Bethesda will love it from the looks of it. I am cautiously optimistic and it helps that Game Pass will make it possible to try it out without spending any more money. I just wish that the info on the 1000+ planets was more interesting than just 100 or so planets hosting life. Hopefully, it will get more content as it goes on like many of their games. Otherwise, this game could end up disappointing more than delivering.
Starfield will release on Xbox Series X/S and PC on September 6th, 2023.
“Any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still know where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.” – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
