When Bethesda Game Studios Director Todd Howard revealed last year that Starfield would have a thousand explorable planets, some people were skeptical as to what that meant in terms of procedural generation versus handcrafted content. Others were curious to learn more specifics about the composition of these planets.
While the last one wasn't a focus of the recent Starfield Direct broadcast, Howard expanded on it in the latest episode of the Kinda Funny XCast. More specifically, he revealed that around 10% of the explorable planets (so around a hundred) would have life on them, which is in the upper range of what scientists believe could be possible based on known science. That's still a lot, and while it leaves around 900 planets with no life, it is by design as the developers wanted to convey the sense of 'beautiful desolation' expressed by actual astronauts who landed on the moon like Buzz Aldrin.
We wanted to do the 1000 planets because we like to give you that choice. [...]
About 10% of those planets have life on them. In Starfield, we're pushing it to the edge of what scientists think, what planets are in that Goldilocks zone versus planets that have resources. 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." It's a difficult design thing. If you add too many things, if it's generating abandoned bases or towers or things to find, it starts feeling too gamey in some of those locations. I think we've dialed that in pretty well, depending on the planet that you're on. 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.
It's worth noting that just because there is no native flora and fauna on those planets doesn't mean they won't have any human life, as in explorers and miners and pirates and whatnot who could have built outposts for various reasons. By the way, if you're wondering about the size of the planets, Reddit user XxXMach_SevenXxX attempted some napkin math that shows they might be on a scale of 1:20. Of course, many of the unknown variables could throw the calculation off.
Also in the same Kinda Funny XCast interview, Todd Howard confirmed Starfield won't have land vehicles or fishing at launch. The release date is scheduled for September 6th on PC and Xbox Series S|X, though early access for owners of the Premium Edition and Constellation Edition begins on September 1st.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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