For over seven years, Bethesda worked on Starfield, delaying the release date by ten months at one point. Nevertheless, the development team ran out of time in the end, as revealed by former Lead Quest Designer Will Shen.
One aspect suffered particularly: the grand finale, which apparently was assembled at the last minute to give the role-playing game at least a somewhat reconciling ending. The reason? Despite the enormous team size, the quest team didn’t have enough resources, leading Lead Designer Steve Cornett to step in to help eventually.
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Starfield: The Finale Is The Result of a Panic Button
A big role-playing game without a final quest? That’s obviously not an option, which is why Shen turned to Cornett under time pressure, who acted as a sort of “panic button.” He provided the idea for Starfield’s final confrontation, which we won’t delve into further here due to spoilers. However, it’s a finale that saved the team a lot of time, as many elements could be reused rather than created from scratch.
“We were finally at a stage of the project where we could play through the whole [game]. And we realized that we were missing the big final location that would tie the story together and have a satisfying, action-packed ending,” Shen said during a lecture at the Game Developers Conference. (via PC Gamer).
In his discussion, Shen also delves into why time management became an issue in such a large project like Starfield. He believes it’s due to the sheer number of employees: while Skyrim had around 100 developers, Starfield grew to over 500 employees, with some also employed at studios like Machine Games or Arkane.
As a result, according to Shen and his former colleague Daryl Brigner, it became increasingly difficult to organize everything, especially between the various departments. “Now, every proposal had to go through all the producers because we had to review all possible work,” Shen said. In the end, this led to less collaboration, as many teams were already stretched thin.
For Shen and Brigner, they have moved on from Bethesda, while Todd Howard and his team focus on the future. This includes Starfield continuing to play a role, including with patches implementing new features.
Source: PC Gamer
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