With over a thousand different planets to explore, Starfield looks set to be an absolutely massive game, and though only about 10 percent of its smattering of planets will have life on them, it doesn’t sound like there’s going to be any shortage of things to do or see Bethesda’s space-faring RPG. When you are exploring its many different planets though, how much can we expect them to vary from each other?
Speaking in a recent interview with Kinda Funny, when asked that same question, director Todd Howard confirmed that Starfield will feature “a lot” of biomes, and though some of its planets will only have one biome, there will be others that will have “a whole bunch”. Meanwhile, each biome, and every planet’s unique properties – like temperature and radiation, among others – will also come with different demands for your suits and protection.
“We have a lot of biomes,” Howard said. “We do look at temperature, we look at the radiation, we look at all of those things on a planet for your suit and your protection. You can get certain ailments if you’re not ready and certain weather things can come through with all of that. There are obviously planets that might have one type of biome, and there are planets that have a whole bunch, and the creatures and the plants and everything go with the biomes.”
Going into further detail on the unique flora and fauna of each planet, Howard spoke about the ability to survey planets and sell complete data sets for large cash rewards, which he described as a “zen-like” experience.
“There’s a whole part of the game about surveying planets, like discovering all of the flora and fauna and resources. Plants also have traits, usually geological things that are inherent to that planet. And if you fully survey a planet, that data is actually worth a lot of money – credits – in the game.
“So there’s a whole part of the game that’s really just doing that. It’s a little more… I almost describe it [as] zen-like. Yeah, you can get on a planet where the creatures, some of them can be aggressive, where it can get dangerous. We’ve actually had a problem at times with the predator creatures going and killing all of the more peaceful creatures. We really try to mix it up and spend a lot of time balancing that, so it is fun minute-to-minute, but you also know what you’re getting into.”
When you’re exploring these planets, you won’t be able to use any vehicles or mounts, and will instead be relying primarily on your Boost Pack. Read more on that through here.
Starfield launches on September 6 for Xbox Series X/S and PC.
