By this time, just about everyone who's wanted to explore the galaxy in Bethesda's latest game, Starfield, has done just that. Whether you dove in at launch or after Shattered Space was released, you most likely had a pretty good time joining the ranks of pirates, finding ancient artifacts, or building your own Clippy ship.
Coming in under decent reviews, Starfield is an open-world/space RPG created under the direction of Todd Howard and Bethesda Game Studios. Their first original IP in decades, it was unable to surpass the likes of Skyrim or Fallout, but still found an audience that plays to this day. So why wasn't it as successful?
There are plenty of reasons players might be able to point to as to why Starfield isn't as booming as Skyrim. Not every one of those grounds for dislike is legitimate, but some hold merit. A small one I know some players were bothered by was the lack of gore or dismemberment found in previous games like Fallout.
In an interview with Dennis Mejillones, a former Senior Character Artist on Skyrim, Fallout 4, Fallout 76, and Starfield, Kiwi Talkz asked a series of questions related to his career. These related to werewolves almost being cut from Skyrim, the Creation Engine getting complete rewrites from the ground up, and how much he loved working with Todd Howard. They also touched on the removal of more colorful gore systems.
Technical debt
Kiwi asked, "Why was gore removed in Starfield [specifically, like Fallout or Skyrim]?"
According to Dennis, it came down to scope and themes, "That has a lot of implications with the different suits from a technical perspective. There's a lot that has to go with it. You have to cut the helmet in a certain way; you have meat caps to the bottom where the flesh is. We had systems for all of that, and it got turned into a big rat's nest of all these things you have to count for."
I can understand that. Helmets and backpacks, with their various attachments, become a nightmare to continuously add dismemberment elements. At some point, with the amount of other items that continue being added into the game that a system like that would need to account for, it becomes best to go without it. They crossed a point where the benefits of abandoning a system outweighed having it in place.
Thematic reasons
Continuing, he specified it also came down to a thematic choice in how dismemberment or lack thereof was presented, "Fallout is very stylized in that regard; it's meant to be tongue-in-cheek humor. You know that perk that you get where you can make a mess out of something; it's part of the fun.
"I think for Starfield, it was definitely meant to be more lo-fi and realistic. It's like the Expanse, Star Trek, stuff like that. I think it just didn't fit thematically. On top of that, you have the technical overhead cost to get that to work, where it's probably better not to include it in this game," Dennis said.
You can't fault a developer for a vision. Even if you disagree with the picture as a whole, they have every right to make it their own. You don't see exorbitant bloodshed in sci-fi shows that touch on the exploration of space. This will date me, but I hated Star Trek: Nemesis when it was released because it focused on the wrong aspects.
Maybe that's where the modding community will come in and change someday. As for me, I'm not too worried about it. Instead, I'm more focused on another potential DLC coming to Starfield someday and the future release of Elder Scrolls VI. I think that's what everyone has been waiting for anyway.
What do you think? Were you disappointed in the lack of dismemberment? Would you have poured resources into its development over another feature? Let us know below or on social media. I'll make sure to check out the conversation!
