"We were never going to make Mass Effect": Skyrim and Fallout artist says when it came to Starfield, the sci-fi RPG had to adapt

Starfield's lead artist says that Bethesda was "never going to make Mass Effect" when it came to building out the galaxy of its sci-fi RPG.

In a group interview with GamesRadar+, Istvan Pely, who served as lead artist on Fallout 3 and Fallout 4 before Starfield, and also worked across Skyrim and Oblivion, explained that Bethesda's take on intergalactic travel wasn't ever likely to imitate what BioWare had previously done with its Mass Effect games.

Ahead of Starfield's PS5 release, Pely says that Bethesda is "starting from scratch," reimagining the RPG through the lens of PlayStation players who may not have had a chance to play with additions like the Shattered Space DLC. Some things have changed, but others, like space travel, are still part of the studio's effort to make "the game we wanted to make."

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"We made a conscious decision to set the game in a real chunk of the galaxy," Pely explains. "We were never going to do Mass Effect and create nine beautiful, complete [...] planets, because that's not the game we were making. We could never fill the space between with all this content. It's impossible."

Instead, he says, Bethesda has worked on improving the systems "to bring content to the player." For the fans, "the people who really gravitated towards Starfield," that works, because "they understand 'the vastness of space is part of the appeal, and part of the allure'." Once those fans have dialled into that idea, Pely says, it's up to Bethesda to not deliver them a bunch of perfectly-crafted planets, but to work out how to help them as they experience the full galaxy that Starfield is built around.

Starfield composer has "no doubt" Bethesda's RPG will eventually "be legendary," but "people were just not ready" for Todd Howard's vision of space.