Former Bethesda Dev Admits Starfield’s 1,000 Planets Feature Was a Mistake

Starfield’s enormous galaxy may have sounded impressive on paper, but one former Bethesda developer believes the RPG would have benefited from a much smaller scope.

Starfield’s Galaxy Was Simply Too Big

Speaking in a YouTube interview on The Examined Game, hosted by Steven Lake, former Bethesda environment artist Nate Purkeypile explained that he would have approached Starfield’s planetary exploration very differently. “It’s very accurate that if I was in charge of Starfield, I would not have done it that way at all,” he said.

“I would have done a handful of planets with bespoke layouts.” – Nate Purkeypile

Purkeypile spent 14 years at Bethesda, contributing to locations including Diamond City in Fallout 4 and Little Lamplight in Fallout 3, working as lead artist on Fallout 76, and helping lay out the city of Neon during Starfield’s early development before leaving the studio about a year into the project.

He said he was already drawing parallels to Mass Effect 1’s procedurally generated planets and their repeated dungeons while still at the studio, and did not think Starfield’s approach was a good idea.

That criticism cuts to the heart of Starfield’s exploration problem. The RPG certainly offers scale, but repeating structures and sparsely populated landscapes often make its galaxy feel less exciting than Bethesda’s smaller open worlds. We reached a similar conclusion when examining how Starfield’s procedural generation leaves considerable room for improvement.

A Handful Of Bespoke Planets Could Have Worked Better

Purkeypile’s proposed alternative was not to abandon space exploration entirely. Instead, he wanted Bethesda to concentrate its resources on a smaller collection of handcrafted planets with more deliberate layouts, or else commit fully to procedural generation the way No Man’s Sky does rather than what he described as “stitching stuff together in slightly different ways.”

Purkeypile felt the sheer scale made it difficult to be intentional about where things were placed and why, which is part of what usually makes exploring a Bethesda game rewarding. He pointed to Starfield’s major cities as an example, noting they are dense and detailed up close but essentially empty just past their edges.

That trade-off is especially noticeable when compared to Fallout or The Elder Scrolls, where wandering off the main path regularly leads to curated locations and environmental stories. It was also among the issues informing our broader Starfield review and criticism of Bethesda’s design choices. Exploration is a central promise of the game, so repetition hits particularly hard.

To be clear, Purkeypile was not solely responsible for Starfield’s overall direction, and he has said he does not think the game is bad, just that it falls short of great. Still, he considered the 1,000-planet target the wrong move and voiced that concern as early as the game’s development.

The comments also provide an interesting counterpoint to the Starfield design director’s response to player criticism. Bigger is not automatically better, and Starfield may be Bethesda’s clearest example of why handcrafted density can matter far more than raw scale.