Former Bethesda Dev Shares His Vision for a Different Starfield

A veteran of Bethesda Game Studios, who contributed to Skyrim, Fallout 3, Fallout 4, and Fallout 76, has opened up about how he would have approached Starfield if he were at the helm—and his ideas are drastically different from what shipped.

Nate Purkeypile, who spent 14 years at Bethesda before founding the indie studio Just Purkey Games in 2021, was a lead lighting artist and senior world artist on Starfield. He left the project and the company over two years before the game's release. In a recent interview with The Examined Game, Purkeypile revealed that he had voiced concerns internally about Starfield's ambitious goal of including 1,000 planets—a feature that became a major focus of its pre-launch marketing.

Ahead of Starfield's launch in September 2023, Bethesda's Todd Howard confirmed that only 10% of the 1,000 planets would host life, arguing that each planet served a purpose. He explained that barren worlds were for resource gathering, while others featured cities and quest locations, with a mix of handcrafted and procedurally generated content.

Now, three years post-launch, Purkeypile has detailed why he believes this design philosophy was flawed and contributed to Starfield not reaching the heights of Bethesda's Elder Scrolls and Fallout series. He stated that if he had led the project, he would have focused on a smaller number of planets with fully handcrafted layouts.

"If I was in charge of Starfield, I would have not done it that way at all," he said. "I would have done a handful of planets with bespoke layouts. Even playing Starfield after it came out during the main quest I was running into repeated locations... and I was like, well yeah, because you're only going to have time to make a certain number of dungeons. And if you're going to have a thousand planets you're going to be repeating content and it's not actually a procedural game."

He drew parallels to Mass Effect 1's procedural planets, which also reused dungeons, and criticized the approach as "space quilts"—chunks of content rearranged rather than truly unique experiences. He argued that for a game with thousands of planets, the developers would need to go the full No Man's Sky route and generate unique content continuously.

Purkeypile acknowledged that the ambition might have fallen short, but he also suggested a fundamental disagreement with Todd Howard and others about what makes Bethesda games special. He noted that the handcrafted landmarks and intentional placement of content are what create surprise and depth, not repeated dungeons across a vast universe.

He also pointed out the environmental incoherence in Starfield's major cities, which are large but surrounded by nothing, making the world feel incomplete.

Purkeypile isn't alone in his criticism. Bruce Nesmith, former lead designer on Skyrim and senior designer on Starfield, told MinnMax in October 2023 that he had initially proposed only about two dozen systems instead of the 120 that made it into the game. He argued that building one solar system involves most of the work needed for others, so the extra systems weren't a significant addition.

Despite the mixed reception, Bethesda has reaffirmed its commitment to Starfield. In a recent message to fans, Todd Howard announced that the game has attracted over 17 million players and nearly a billion hours of playtime. He teased new Starborn content planned for 2027, along with ongoing updates and creator support, emphasizing that Starfield remains a key part of the studio's future.

The game, which launched in 2023, struggled to meet fan expectations, and subsequent updates and expansions have not significantly changed the narrative. However, Bethesda's continued investment suggests the studio sees long-term potential in the space-faring RPG.