Starfield writer and designer Emil Pagliarulo has claimed that the game is, “in a lot of ways, the best game we’ve ever made”, suggesting that it now “sits right next to Fallout and Elder Scrolls” in Bethesda’s pantheon.
Speaking to GamesRadar, Pagliarulo said that Starfield is the result of Bethesda pushing itself to “make something totally different”; the studio set out to “jam into an Xbox the biggest, richest space simulation RPG anyone could imagine”.
In Pagliarulo’s eyes, the studio “pulled it off”, and Starfield is, as a result, a “technical marvel”. Pagliarulo acknowledges the game “might not be everyone’s cup of tea”, but he says it’s been successful enough to take its place alongside the two aforementioned franchises.
Although Pagliarulo is effusive about Bethesda’s achievements with Starfield, it’s an assessment with which a lot of players may find themselves disagreeing.
The game is still sitting at a Mixed rating on Steam across over 100,000 reviews, with players pointing to technical issues, a perceived shallowness in terms of content, and an overreliance on procedural generation as reasons to avoid Starfield.
Pagliarulo’s got an explanation for that, though; he says that Starfield does actually have lots of hand-crafted content, but that it’s spread out over a wider distance, which is “something a lot of folks missed”. Hmm.
When it comes to Starfield‘s new Shattered Space DLC, Pagliarulo points to its “oodles” of what GamesRadar calls “bespoke content”, as well as its “really unique”, “hand-crafted landmass” to explore.
Unfortunately, it seems players disagree with him; Shattered Space‘s Steam reviews are sitting at Mostly Negative right now, with players calling the DLC “boring”, “lackluster”, and “a disappointment”.
It’s also fair to say the DLC has failed to entice a lot of Starfield players back into space; Starfield‘s player count peaked at around 21,000 on Monday, which is a far cry from the game’s glory days of more than 330,000 concurrent users close to launch.
Of course, not every Starfield player will be interested in DLC, but it’s not a great look for a major expansion launch, especially when Pagliarulo says Bethesda looked to DLC from games like Fallout 4 (which is about as popular as Starfield on Steam right now despite being nine years old) for inspiration.
Pagliarulo says he’s optimistic about Starfield‘s future; he tells GamesRadar he’s “excited about the stuff we’re working on now”, suggesting that Starfield is “transcending its status as a game” and becoming a “platform for science fiction and space content”.
We’ll have to wait and see if he turns out to be right. In the meantime, you can check out our original review of Starfield right here.
