There's plenty riding on Starfield. After Microsoft's acquisition of Bethesda
in 2021, the game was unapologetically positioned at the forefront of Xbox's
future first party output. Such notoriety is not without it's caveats.
Pressure to perform is immense, especially after Bethesda Game Studio's (BGS)
last release (Fallout 76) failed to click critically and commercially.
Not if you ask game director Todd Howard though. The spearhead of BGS claims
pressure is non-existent, as he feels as confident as ever that Starfield will
deliver, and he has the numbers to prove it.
Mr Howard was kind enough to accompany Era Error through a private premiere of
several brand new planets from the game. Unfortunately, what appeared seemed
incredibly mundane, despite the increasing enthusiasm beside us.
Our janky avatar first touched down on a lifeless, blatant interpretation of
Mars. To Bethesda's credit, the depth of the planet appeared literally
endless. If only we encountered something of substance during our time there.
Not a plant, crater, item or creature. Completely desolate.
"This is one of our many procedurally generated planets." Howard
proudly exclaimed.
"You could roam this planet for 1000 hours if you wanted to and wouldn't
walk the surface area. In fact, you could press jump 10,000 times here, or
better yet, leave your console on while you went to work, came home, took your dog for a walk, cooked dinner and wanked yourself to sleep. Your character would still
be standing there. It's absolutely revolutionary technology."
Quick resume never works anyway.
We were told the next planet was personally handcrafted by developers and the
differences were immediately apparent. This one was considerably smaller, had
a bland, white texture wrapped around its surface and contained one single
collectable on it.
"I researched some elaborate astrology during pre-production and decided to
create my personal homage to a little obscure planet known as the moon. That
American flag is one of 800,000, cut and pasted all over the universe which
bear no influence on the game whatsoever. We don't even have to animate
them because of a lack of gravity in space. Authenticity in the finest
order."
Era Error: Yawn. Fascinating. Do you feel that your game is becoming unfairly
maligned against No Man Sky?
"Our 25 year old game engine is VINTAGE god damn it. People love seeing new
games in old engines, why are we the exception? Landing your ship manually
on to planets is boring anyway. Jank, incredibly repetitious quests and
completely dead eyes of NPC's is where modern gaming's at. Lifeless
environments makes it feel like real space!"
"How many bullet points and arbitrary numbers do you need to hear before
you mindlessly buy another game of ours? 10 trillion polygons, a hundred
million unpaid man hours, 14,000 bugs never to be addressed. Endless crashes
of our servers when the game launches. My personal guarantee to nickel and
dime you through increasingly egregious micro-transactions..."
"I bet you'd feel more satisfied playing if you knew how poorly our employees are treated. How about this. I'll let you call one up on
their personal number and personally abuse them in exchange for a good preview. I'd even let you SWAT them. Only an intern though. Can't afford to lose an experienced one."
The more we hear of Starfield, the better it sounds. We'd like to thank Todd
Howard for personally taking the time to remind us that this upcoming project
is in fact a Bethesda Softworks title.
