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Former Bethesda artist says Starfield’s 1,000 planets needed fewer, more deliberate worlds

Nate Purkeypile argued that repeated locations and empty space around major cities weakened the authored discoveries central to Bethesda RPGs.

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Starfield‘s huge map was meant to make space feel endless, but Nate Purkeypile believes the game paid too much for that scale. The former Bethesda Game Studios senior artist said he would have built the RPG around a small number of planets with bespoke layouts rather than spreading content across roughly 1,000 worlds.

Purkeypile worked on Fallout 3, Skyrim, Fallout 4, and the early development of Starfield. In a video interview with The Examined Game, he explained that the game’s planetary structure clashed with the kind of authored discovery that has defined Bethesda’s RPGs.

His concern centers on repetition. Purkeypile said he encountered recurring content during the main quest, partly because the game does not generate dramatically different dungeon layouts for every location. That can weaken the feeling that a distant landmark, an unusual NPC, or an out-of-the-way path might lead to a story built specifically for that place.

Purkeypile saw two better directions. One would have been a smaller group of carefully designed planets. The other would have required a far deeper procedural system that kept producing fresh content, closer to No Man’s Sky. In his view, rearranging existing pieces in slightly different combinations does not fully support a galaxy containing thousands of planets.

He also brought up Mass Effect 1 as an early example of the issue, pointing to its procedural planets and repeated dungeons. Starfield’s major cities created another problem for him: although the cities themselves are large, the areas outside them can feel empty and disconnected from the wider world.

Purkeypile was not calling Starfield a bad game. His criticism was focused on how its world is organized, with fewer planets and more deliberate placement potentially creating more of the unexpected discoveries associated with Bethesda’s earlier RPGs.

The discussion comes as Bethesda continues to support the space RPG. The studio has confirmed Starfield’s Year 3 plans, including more stories, gameplay improvements, and updates.

Would a smaller group of handcrafted planets have suited Starfield better, or is its broad scale part of the appeal? Share your thoughts in the comments, and follow us on X, Bluesky, YouTube, Instagram, Steam, and Telegram.

Starfield is a single-player action role-playing game developed by Bethesda Game Studios and set in an open-world space environment. Players create a customizable character and explore a region of the Milky Way galaxy spanning approximately 50 light-years, landing on over 1,000 planets with procedurally generated landscapes. Gameplay includes first-person and third-person combat using firearms, explosives, and melee weapons, as well as spaceship construction, outpost building, resource gathering, and crafting. Players recruit companion characters, join factions, and progress through skill trees spanning Physical, Social, Combat, Science, and Tech categories.