“We shouldn’t have made it,” says former Starfield lead, because something more than “Skyrim in space” was too much even for Bethesda

Although Starfield stands as one of Bethesda Game Studios‘ most ambitious RPG projects to date, it didn’t exactly outshine the likes of The Elder Scrolls or Fallout – and that may just be because it was a bit too ambitious.

Speaking to FRVR, Starfield lead systems designer Kurt Kuhlmann admits as much, first explaining how everything being “new” – because, you know, the space RPG did see the “largest engine overhaul” from Bethesda since the original Oblivion – complicated things right off the bat.

Developers “needed this new system to work” before building on it, he says, “and the later that goes, the less time you have to work with it.” The size of the team working on Starfield was simply not it either, considering the sheer scope.

“Even with the size of the team that we had for Starfield, it wasn’t big enough to create the amount of content that the grand idea of the game really required,” as Kuhlmann recalls. “Like, we needed way more [devs].”

Why was the scope so wide for Starfield, though? Well, Bethesda head Todd Howard wanted it to be one heck of a game.