Summary
Bethesda Executive Producer Todd Howard opened up on the creative process behind the lore ofStarfield. His comments were given from a high-level perspective, thus offering new insights into how the studio approached everything fromStarfield’sbiggest mysteriesto its smallest backstories.
WhileStarfieldpromptly became the biggest launch in Bethesda’s history, the project itself was an unprecedented undertaking for the Maryland-based developer. That’s largely because the last time Bethesda made a new IP, even the most ambitious game development cycles were a couple of years long, at most, which is roughly how long the company took to finishThe Elder Scrolls: Arena, originally launched in 1994. With the scope of contemporary big-budget games being much larger, creating such an experience based on an entirely new IP was a gargantuan task.
Howard recently shared some new insights intoStarfield’sensuing eight-year development cycle, including a detailed breakdown of how the studio approached the daunting undertaking of creating compelling sci-fi lore from scratch. During the latest episode of theAIAS Game Maker’s Notebookpodcast, the executive explained that the creative process started with Lead Designer Emil Pagliarulo and his team defining the new universe in the broadest of strokes. Early on during this process, Bethesda’s art team led by Istvan Pely supplemented those initial ideas with concept art, helping the developers settle on “the feel” of the game that would influence its overarching themes, Howard explained.
From there, the studio’s writers began filling outStarfield’slore timelineleading up to the planned events of the game itself. While their primary objective at this point was to figure out how the game’s universe got to where it is by the timeStarfield’smain quest takes place, this stage of the creative process is also when a lot of the RPG’s backstories scattered throughout its many books and notes were written, Howard revealed.
With the main timeline out of the way, the team turned to finalizing the actual story of the game, branching out into quest design and dialogue. Although Howard didn’t clarify on how long each individual stage took to complete, the recently confirmed fact thatStarfieldhas over 200,000 lines of spoken dialogue suggests that this part of the creative process was its most time-consuming one. The industry veteran concluded that the overall effort was worth it, positing that the resulting lore is “almost” as detailed as something expected from a pre-existing series.
Starfieldis available now on PC and Xbox Series X/S.
