By the time Bethesda was on Starfield, you'd 'basically get in trouble' for breaking schedule, says former dev: 'A lot of the great stuff within Skyrim came from having the freedom to do what you want'
Starfield sort of came and went, huh? With a lukewarm reception on release, a DLC that didn't quite summon that bygone Bethesda magic, and a dedicated fanbase starting to gnaw on their own tails due to a lack of communication, an RPG we were anticipating to be a landmark has gone quiet as the vacuum of space, with nary so much as a bit of raging against the dying of the night.
Many attribute Starfield's muted response to the idea that Bethesda has grown a bit, well, sterile and rigid. It's a sentiment backed up by former Bethesda dev Nate Purkeypile, who quit over a deluge of meetings and a more restrictive corporate structure that had worn him down over time: "While I enjoyed working at Bethesda a lot when we were about 65 to 110 people on Fallout 3 and Skyrim, I enjoyed it a lot less as it grew and grew."
Purkeypile had more to say about his years at Bethesda when PC Gamer caught up with him at Game Developers Conference 2025. He recalls those halcyon days of Skyrim with no small amount of nostalgia: "We had quite a bit of freedom to do stuff. The one that people know about was Blackreach … That was not on schedule at all. Like we just kind of did that on the side and put it in."
Skyrim's werewolves, Purkeypile adds, were another novel concept—and, pointedly, a passion project as well: "That was a whole side-project from somebody. Originally, it was just dudes with dog heads, and someone took it upon themselves to make it awesome."
Ultimately, he reckons that "A lot of the great stuff within Skyrim came from having that freedom to do what you want, as opposed to a game with this whole 'checklist design' and 'design by committee'".
That describes my time with Starfield. I had a fun 20 hours in it, but it never managed to excite me with memorable quests or characters. The biggest for me was Vasco, a robot companion they somehow managed to make dull as a rock. Nothing else about the setting really drew me in, nor would it have much to keep me there.
There's actually an early game quest going over Starfield's lore, its mechs, and the wars long since passed—which is inadvertently a total buzzkill, because it winds up pitching you on a game you'd probably rather be playing. You know, set in a time where the interesting stuff is actually happening. I can't help but wonder if the slow reduction of freedom and flexibility made for a vanishingly small amount of interesting characters and places in Bethesda's catalogue.
In other words, maybe what Starfield needed was space werewolves, or a space Blackreach. Alas, Purkeypile thinks "you would basically get in trouble for doing that," in modern-era Bethesda, "because everything does have a cost." It's not even unreasonable, mind. He's quick to clarify: "If everyone is doing that within 500 people, it's a mess. But with, you know, 100 people? It's much more manageable, and where a lot of the interesting things come from."
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