Bethesda intended Starfield to be more violent, including 'meat caps' for beheaded astronauts, but the gore was toned down for technical reasons and because it 'didn't fit thematically'
For all this, it's worth remembering that Starfield is a decent game overall, one that, according to PCG's mag editor Robert, is significantly more fun now that it supports mods. Indeed, there's at least one gore mod available for Starfield already, so if the lack of gibs in Bethesda's sci-fi RPG was ever a problem, it has, in a way, solved itself.
When I first played Starfield, I wasn't surprised to discover it was less violent than Fallout 4 or Skyrim—Bethesda had long stressed it was shooting for a more realistic vibe to its space RPG compared to previous games. But I was surprised by just how much more staid Starfield was than Bethesda's previous efforts. Space is a nasty, hostile place before you throw guns and grenades into the mix, so it was odd to discover that the gnarlier edges of Bethesda RPGs had been so drastically sanded down.
As it turns out, Starfield was originally intended to be a gorier game than what Bethesda ultimately released, as revealed in an interview by Starfield's senior artist Dennis Mejillones. Speaking to Kiwitalkz, Mejillones explained that many of the grisly systems seen in Fallout 4 were implemented in Starfield initially, but were removed for a combination of technical and thematic reasons.
Addressing the technical difficulties first, Mejillones says the gore system had "a lot of implications with the different suits," referring to the many spacesuits players can wear. "From a technical perspective, there's a lot that has to go with [that]. You have to cut the helmet in a certain way, and it's gotta come off, and you've gotta add meat caps to the bottom where the flesh is." By 'meat-caps,' Mejillones means the bloodied stump that will stick out of the helmet and the body when the two are separated. It is also my new favourite piece of game developer jargon.
Mejillones points out Bethesda "had systems for all of that," but it "turned into a big Rat's Nest of all these things you had to account for, now with all these crazy hoses on the helmets and all that stuff that we added." The ability to change body proportions also apparently affected the system.
The other reason for Starfield's less gratuitous violence is more obvious—it just didn't fit with Starfield's tone. "Fallout is very stylised in that regard. It's meant to be. That's part of the tongue-in-cheek humour," Mejillones says. "For Starfield, it was definitely meant to be more lo-fi and realistic. We were inspired a lot by things like The Expanse and Star Trek, so I think it just didn't fit thematically."
I don't know whether additional gore would necessarily have improved Starfield's combat, although having recently replayed Fallout 4, Starfield is definitely missing something on the gunplay front. Perhaps the greater variety of weapons and encounter types in Fallout just gives it a bit more life, as well as the cinematic flair added by VATS.