Starfield Developer Had “Hundreds of Plans” for the Game That Didn’t Make it

Bethesda Game Studios’ Starfield is available now for Xbox Series X/S and PC, amassing over six million players and topping physical sales charts in the United Kingdom. It was also in development for eight years, and despite that, as usually happens in the industry, some plans didn’t make it in.

Director Todd Howard spoke to The Washington Post about challenges faced by the developer, including how the COVID-19 pandemic affected development. The original November 2022 date was decided with “lots of buffer” in mind, but “As things moved on, we were off by a percentage, and a percentage when it comes to the scale of this game turns out to be a lot of time.” The delay was “the right thing to do to give us the time we required,” he added.

But what of the “hundreds of plans” the studio had for Starfield which didn’t make it in? A recreation of Fallout 3’s post-apocalyptic Washington D.C. was discussed, per Howard. “We planned, and those plans went out the window. We knew we were going to rewrite parts of the engine, so we started building technology for the planets and the outer space stuff on our previous engine and renderer.”

As for the future, Starfield already has DLC in development, like the Shattered Space expansion. Details on its release have yet to be shared, but Howard did confirm that full mod support will arrive next year. Stay tuned in the meantime for more updates.