Ah, Starfield, a game that has long since left the collective consciousness. In her review, Alice Bee (RPS in peace) stated that it was such a large thing that it ultimately felt “small, cold and uninhabited”. I remember thinking the same thing. Would I think differently if there was a lot of blood in it? NO. But would I have had more fun? Probably yes. Well, a former senior artist at Bethesda revealed in an interview Kiwi Talkz Podcast (Thanks VGC for this place) that they originally planned to beheaded, but eventually decided against it.
Dennis Mejillones, who worked at Bethesda for almost 12 years, was asked why Starfield didn’t prove to be as bloodthirsty as other back catalog games like Fallout 4. He explained that it had more to do with technical limitations than anything else, specifically “implications for different suits” and how some helmets may react to being cut and having “meat caps at the bottom where the body is.”
Eventually, Mejillones says, the systems “turned into a big rat’s nest of all these things that had to be reckoned with.” The game’s character creator also “evolved significantly” during the game’s development, which played a huge role in the difficulty.
Mejillones further contrasts Starfield’s style with that of Fallout, with Fallout being full of “joke humor” like the Bloody Mess expansion where people just “blow themselves into goo”. Starfield “was intended to be more restrained and realistic,” he said.
“We were inspired by things like The Expanse and Star Trek and stuff like that, so I think it just didn’t fit thematically,” Mejillones explained. “And then there’s the technical cost to make it work, so we said, ‘it’s probably best not to include it in this game.’
Deep down I know that a bloodier Starfield wouldn’t make up for the game being a drag, but man, it would be a bit less of a drag if I could rip some space boy’s head off his shoulders with a space shovel or something. At least the streaks of red added a bit of color to the gray.
