Starfield was a "bat**** crazy idea" for a studio that's "never made a space sim," Bethesda lead admits, but "an ambitious project is what we aim for"

Starfield design director Emil Pagliarulo says making the space RPG was a "bat**** crazy idea" considering that Bethesda had "never made a space sim," and that's precisely why the developers had to do it.

As part of a chat with GamesRadar+ about the legacy of Fallout 4, we talk about how ambitious Bethesda's plans for the RPG were – even by today's standards. For Pagliarulo, those big swings are exactly what Bethesda is all about.

"An ambitious project is what we aim for," Pagliarulo explains. "In a lot of ways, Starfield is a bat**** crazy idea for a studio that's like, 'we've never made a space sim, let's do that.'"

Using Fallout 4 to illustrate Bethesda's approach to creation, Pagliarulo says the developers don't think about what the industry landscape might look like in 10 years, or how the game might be received, or how many people might end up playing what you're making. "When you think, 'oh my god, literally millions of people are going to play this' – it becomes paralyzing," he says. As such, the best thing you can do is "go into your creative headspace" and "just try to make the most fun game you can."

Pagliarulo also praises how iterative the developers at Bethesda are, saying that over the years, everyone has gotten much better at putting content into a game as soon as possible so the rest can gather around, play it, and be fearless about what comes next.

"I think the hardest thing for any game developer to do is to be brutally honest with themself and play their own content and admit when something sucks, and that it has to change, because, you know, it's a lot of work," he says. "It's a lot of work that you may have 'wasted' and then a lot of work that you have ahead of you."

You can read our full chat with Pagliarulo at the link regarding the creation and legacy of Fallout 4, though it's illuminating to see how much of Bethesda's approach to the RPG likely chopped and changed as it moved onto Starfield. Since its launch, the reception to the space-faring RPG has undoubtedly been more mixed than the likes of Fallout 4, though fans are still waiting with bated breath to see what's next for it – according to some reports, it might be something fairly substantial too.

Starfield designer admits Bethesda's space epic isn't "the same caliber" as Fallout and Elder Scrolls because it's full of procedural generation: "The planets start to feel very samey."