Starfield continues to generate debate not so much for what it is, but for what it could have been. He Bethesda space RPG It divided many players. Although there was a large sector of users who enjoyed Starfield, the reality is that some aspects frustrated the experience. While there are rumors that Bethesda is working on Starfield 2.0 and an upcoming expansion, a studio veteran has explained why this RPG is not on par with Fallout 4 or Skyrim.

Starfield was a victim of bureaucracy

Kurt Kuhlmann, the one who was Skyrim co-lead designerhas told in an interview in PC Gamer what is the main problem of space RPGand it all boils down to the fact that “it never really caught on as a game.” He believes it was a releaseable game in September 2023, unlike many other players who think Starfield should have been delayed. The American creative left Bethesda in 2023, so he was present throughout the development of Starfield.

Kuhlmann describes how way of working at Bethesda changed over the years. He says that at the time of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim the creative leaders were fully involved in development, working directly with quest designers, but as the studio grew the structure became more complex since the different bosses were distributed among several studios and even more producers were added. This caused decision making to be less direct, which resulted in communication problems.

Solving a problem or making a decision required approval from different people in different studios, and often the answers didn’t match, requiring Todd Howard’s involvement. This process of ‘bureaucracy‘is the price to pay when you have to manage equipment many developers. This work model affected the final result of Starfield and the pace of the space RPG, which generated the feeling that the central pillars had not been closed of the game.

“I don’t know if they were wrong and I was right, but I didn’t like it; Maybe, when you have so many people, your job can no longer also be to create content if you are also managing the scope of the project. There were people who talked to leaders in one studio and got an answer, and people who talked to bosses in another team and maybe they got a different answer“. It is believed that Starfield was a victim of Bethesda’s ambitions and that the development of this space RPG was 50% “completely new.”

The fact create a new IP It has its risks because you are moving away from your previous games a lot. The space setting, space combat, procedurally generated planets, and several other aspects were created from scratch. For this reason, many new people were hired. “How do you manage a team that size and get everyone on the same page? We do not have institutional knowledge about how to integrate all that into the missions,” says

Starfield was a game made with communication problems and a lot’bureaucracy‘. When creating missions, Kuhlmann says designers added elements to be modified later in development. “I think that made the game feel less cohesive, because there were a lot of pieces that, when we started and for a long time, were up in the air, being remade or constantly changing.”

Apart from that, the shadow of a Fallout 76 that was launched in the worst possible way also weighed on Starfield. “We couldn’t repeat that. We can’t release a game with the problems that Fallout 76 had at launch, and that was one of the reasons why Starfield had much more development timeStill, Kuhlmann says it was a solid game, far from Bethesda’s best. “We’re trying to make a huge leap into a new genre with all these new systems and mechanics.”

“I don’t think you should expect that when you get into the space combat genre that you’re going to be better or as good. It wasn’t embarrassing. Things were done in an outstanding way.” Overall, Starfield It was not a very popular game. due to a combination of internal factors: an increasingly bureaucratic structure that diluted decision-making and generated communication problems, a lack of knowledge when approaching a new IP and creating new systems from scratch, and excessive ambition that forced key pillars to be remade during development. Maybe in a few months we will see a Starfield 2.0 and a launch on PS5 along with a new expansion, it would be great news to redeem itself.

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