Starfield interview: ex Bethesda dev on scale, building a new universe

pcgamesn.com:

We’ve had the opportunity to do a Starfield interview, which could very well be the magnum opus of Bethesda’s RPG games, as the studio steps out from behind the likes of Fallout and The Elder Scrolls to develop a new universe that redefines its open-world games to be more open-universe, with thousands of planets to explore. This anticipation drove us to chat with an ex-Bethesda developer, who struck out on his own after leaving Bethesda last year and working on Starfield for quite some time.

This person is Nate Purkeypile, founder of Just Purkey Games and a developer for 17 years, 14 of which were spent at Bethesda from Fallout 3 all the way to Starfield, as an artist on many projects. Naturally, Purkeypile wasn’t able to go too in depth about Starfield, due to contracts and the fact it isn’t out until next year, but he gave us some interesting tidbits about the space project.

When it comes to the size of Starfield, Purkeypile says it isn’t just the biggest game Bethesda has ever made, but also the one that has required the biggest team as well.

“The scope of that project is the main thing that’s different, because, you know, Fallout 3, Skyrim, Fallout 4, that was all one team. Fallout 76, that was two mostly, we had a little bit of help from Montreal, but it was mostly the Austin and Maryland [Bethesda] studios working together.

“But yeah, Starfield is a much bigger project, it’s like 500 people or something on the team, whereas I think [Fallout] 76 was maybe 200, tops,” added Purkeypile, saying that the colossal size of the development team was one of the reasons why he left and decided to make games on his own.

Purkeypile also said that the biggest challenge faced during Starfield’s development while he was there –