
The game’s developers say they are confident they have struck the right balance by using a mix of scientific data and artificial intelligence to generate realistic planets, and then fine-tuning those worlds with human programmers who also craft the quests and the enemies that players will encounter. That scale has caused some concern that the studio responsible for glitchy releases like Skyrim and Fallout 76 is in over its head - and that some aspects of space will be a black hole of fun.

So Starfield has promised 1,000 searchable planets, about 10 percent of which contain life in addition to quests and valuable raw materials.

But that would not have the same feeling of being this explorer.” We could have made a game where there are four cities and four planets.

“All of us, I think, at some point look to the sky and say, ‘Man, I wonder what it would be like to blast off and land on the moon?’ or ‘I wonder what would be beyond that?’ or ‘What’s in that star?’ or ‘Is there life out there?’” Howard said in an interview, adding: “We needed the scale to have that feeling. Todd Howard, the executive producer of Bethesda, was well aware that Starfield, which is being released for Windows computers and the Xbox Series X and S, would have to be expansive to reflect the allure of space travel.
