Starfield's planet surveying is almost "zen-like," says Todd Howard

After the wave of info we had with Starfield Direct, game director Todd Howard goes into more detail on aspects like planetary exploration in a recent interview.

Starfield is arguably the biggest upcoming title on our list of all the games coming to Game Pass and we saw a wave of new details about it during the Starfield Direct deep-dive (although we're still waiting on the Starfield achievements). Now, however, game director Todd Howard expands on aspects of the game that a lot of players have been interested in, such as what it's like to explore Starfield's planets.

Speaking in the latest Kinda Funny Xcast episode, Howard first answered a question about how Starfield's many planets would function. "Obviously, it’s procedural. So there’s no way we’re going to go and handcraft an entire planet — what we do is we handcraft individual locations and some of those are placed specifically, obviously the main cities and other quest locations, and then we have a suite of them that are generated or placed when you land, depending on that planet," Howard explains.

"When you look at a system... we’re pushing it, about 10% of those planets have life on them, we’re pushing it to the edge of what do people think, what planets are in that Goldilocks zone, versus planets that have resources. I think it is a moment when you land on some of these barren planets, and again we will generate certain things for you to find on them, but if you look at a planet, you see the resources, it has things you want — I love the Buzz Aldrin quote, 'the magnificent desolation,' I think there’s a certain beauty to landing on those and feeling, 'I’m one of the only people, or the only person, to ever visit this planet.' So it’s a difficult design thing, if you add too many things, if it’s generating too many abandoned bases or towers or things to find, it starts feeling too gamey, in some of those locations, so I think we’ve dialed that in pretty well, depending on the planet that you’re on. And so we hope everybody enjoys it for what it is, but it is an exploration different than we’ve had, where you’re landing, you’re exploring around that landing spot, and then you’re probably going somewhere else.”

Another question was about the diversity of exploration and how different factors on each planet might affect you. "We do have a lot of biomes, we do look at temperature, we look at the radiation, we look at all of those things on a planet so that your suit and your protection — you can get certain ailments if you’re not ready, and certain weather things can come through with all of that," Howard says.

Starfield apparently has a whole faction if you want to be a space pirate — interestingly, however, there is at least one lucrative and less violent way to earn money in the game. "There are obviously planets that might have one type of biome and there are planets that have a whole bunch, and their creatures and the plants and everything go with the biomes, so there’s a whole part of the game where surveying a planet, like discovering all of the flora and fauna and resources; plants also have traits, usually geological things that are inherent to that planet and uncovering those," Howard explains. "And if you fully survey a planet, that data is actually worth a lot of money credits in the game that you can sell. So there’s a whole part of the game that’s really just doing that, it’s a little more, I almost describe it, zen-like.”

He adds that this can get a little less peaceful quite quickly: "yeah you can get on a planet where the creatures there, some of them can be aggressive, where it can get dangerous if you’re exploring the planet, and you can watch the creatures — we’ve actually had a problem at times with the predator creatures going and killing all of the more peaceful creatures you’re coming across... and then you realize there’s something dangerous in the area. So I would say this: that we do everything that you mentioned, and we really try to mix it up and spend a lot of time balancing that so it is fun minute to minute, but you also know what you’re getting into."

In that Kinda Funny interview, Howard also answers questions on everything from accessibility to performance. What do you make of Starfield's many exploration opportunities? Let us know in the comments!

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Written by Heidi Nicholas

Heidi tends to lean towards indie games, RPGs, and open-world games on Xbox, and when not playing Disney Dreamlight Valley, happily installs every new wholesome game that appears on Xbox Game Pass, before diving back into favorites like The Witcher 3. She's looking forward to Age of Mythology Retold, Everwild, Fable, and Avowed on the Xbox horizon. Heidi graduated with an MA in English Literature before joining the TrueAchievements team.