Former Starfield Designer Says It’s a “Good Game” Let Down by Space Being “Inherently Boring”

Now that the dust has settled over the 2023 release of open-world sci-fi RPG Starfield, deeper discussions have started to take place surrounding the game. One such discussion comes courtesy of former systems designer for the game Bruce Nesmith, who spoke about Starfield’s development in a recent episode of the FRVR podcast. In this interview, he referred to Starfield as still fundamentally a “good game” that was hampered from being considered great due to how it used procedural generation for some of its content.

“I think it’s a good game,” said Nesmith. “I don’t think it’s in the same calibre as the other two, you know, Fallout or Skyrim, or Elder Scrolls rather, but I think it’s a good game. I worked on it, I’m proud of the work I did. I’m proud of the work that the people I knew did on it. I think they made a great game.”

Along with this, Nesmith also noted that the fact that Starfield was made by Bethesda raised expectations even higher. He said that, if the sci-fi RPG was instead released by a company other than Bethesda, “it would have been received differently.” The core issues affecting Starfield, according to Nesmith, is the fact that the universe is incredibly large and empty, which means that “space is inherently boring. It’s literally described as nothingness. So moving throughout that isn’t where the excitement is, in my opinion.”

“But when the planets start to feel very samey and you don’t start to feel the excitement on the planets, that’s to me where it falls apart,” he continued. “I was also disappointed when, pretty much, the only serious enemy you fought were people… there’s lots of cool alien creatures, but they’re like the wolves in Skyrim. They’re just there, they don’t contribute, you don’t have the variety of serious opponents that are story generators.”

While it has been two years since the release of Starfield, Bethesda has still seemingly been working on more content for the title. Just last month, the company released a teaser video on social media with the words “Terran Armada”. No details were provided, however, about whether this is going to simply be an update for Starfield or whether it will be an entirely new expansion.

Back in August, lead creative producer Tim Lamb had confirmed that Bethesda was working on a new story DLC for Starfield. Once again, not many details were provided. He did, however, note that the DLC will entail “some new game systems, and a few other smaller delights.” He also mentioned “really interesting stuff coming down the pipe from our verified creators.”

Rumours have indicated that this second DLC release is expected to happen some time in 2026, and is set to coincide with the PS5 release of Starfield, which in turn is rumoured to have been originally planned for release alongside Shattered Space last year. The title is currently only available on PC and Xbox Series X/S. For more details about it, check out our review. Also check out our review for the first Starfield DLC – Shattered Space.