Starfield Lead Artist Explains The Game’s ‘NASA-Punk’ Aesthetic

gamerant.com:

While it's true that many fans would probably prefer to have Elder Scrolls 6, there's still reason to be excited about the upcoming launch of Starfield towards the end of this year. Given that this is Bethesda's first new IP in over 25 years, it will be interesting to see what the end result will be given that the studio has been accustomed to fantasy titles, and, somewhat more recently, post-apocalyptic worlds. While many describe the developer's new space game as sci-fi, the term «NASA-punk» has been bandied around as well.

In a recent article on the Xbox website, which discusses an exclusive Starfield giveaway, lead artist Istvan Pely has said that the team wanted to create something that had a «very realistic» vibe to it. The term «NASA-punk,» which the studio coined during development of the game, is used in this context to describe a science-fiction world, or universe, that is a bit more «grounded and relatable.» Lead animator, Rick Vicens, said that the term was «perfect» as far as the art direction was concerned.

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It sounds like what the team are after is something that players will find immersive and believable, even if it is a sci-fi game, in a story that doesn't sound too far-fetched from the current reality of space travel. It's considered one of the most anticipated video games of 2022, and it's not hard to see why. With Bethesda branching out into new territories after decades of the Elder Scrolls series, and taking over Fallout in 2008, the studio can bring everything it's learned over the years and put it into something that could be somewhat out of the developer's comfort zone. It's difficult to not be a little excited about that.

There's a lot of pressure