'Starfield' Has Over 1000 Planets To Visit (That's Way Too Many)

Starfield is one of the most anticipated open world games of all time. It’s promising a modern AAA experience from the most lauded open world developer, Bethesda. But there’s one problem: I’ll be an old, senile fellow before I ever finish it. Starfield is, quite simply, too big. 

The game is being pitched as ‘Skyrim in space’. For us Elder Scrolls devotees, that sounds like good news. Choosing your own space destiny, forging the fate of the space denizens, hey, maybe even settle down and find a space wife and have some space kids. But Bethesda has gone space mad. In the Xbox/Bethesda new releases presentation on June 12th, they announced that when you’re flying through the stars you can land anywhere, on any planet. 

This will be fulfilling a long time dream of Mass Effect players who yearn for an RPG with even more immersion. Game director Todd Howard followed that mind blowing zinger by announcing that you could do that with every planet in the system. 

Then that absolute mad man announced that there are ONE HUNDRED systems and ONE THOUSAND PLANETS. I gasped and calculated how long I have left to live. 

Not long enough. That’s too many planets. My heart goes out to the poor programmers and developers. No Man’s Sky, the space exploration game with randomly generated planets that stretch seemingly on to infinity, instantly comes to mind. But those planets are created by the game code itself. The Starfield planets were crafted with intention. Can these planets really be diverse enough to fascinate players to explore them all? Are there tantalizing secrets and strange, alien discoveries to be made on every single one of 1,000 planets? 

Or will players quickly feel a familiar sameness after visiting a system or two? Just how long will this game take to finish? Modern open world AAA titles are simply getting out-of-control big and I’m afraid I’ll be an old crone by the time I finish exploring this game. My arthritic hands gnarled around a controller, as I breath out a feeble “I beat it” and then die. 

Still, I know I’ll be playing this game at launch. Although I’ll have to track down an Xbox Series X|S to do it. The game is set to launch for Xbox and PC (presumably with a later Playstation release) in the first half of 2023.