Starfield's lead designer says the game covers ‘so much new ground’

techradar.com:

Starfield’s lead designer and writer, Emil Pagliarulo, has said that the game covers “so much new ground” for the studio and that “players are going to lose their minds”.

Pagliarulo discussed the development team’s progress on Starfield in a recently published blog post on the official Bethesda site. The lead designer suggests that the game is coming along well in the interview, saying that while, early on in development, there can be moments where a game is “just kind of a mess”, eventually “you get to that point where systems really start to come online, and things start to work well, and gel, and you see everything forming into the vision you had when you first started on this crazy journey.” 

The Starfield team has, Pagliarulo reveals, gotten to that point. “When that first happened with Starfield," he says, «it really was an, ’Oh. Oh wow. Yeah. This is… something really special. Players are going to lose their minds.’” Pagliarulo adds, “It’s been so awe-inspiring watching Starfield morph into this amazing game, little by little, and with us covering SO much new ground.” 

With the game being in full production, Pagliarulo says that most of his time is spent “either meeting with the designers to help guide their work, or playtesting the game constantly to gauge our progress and see what might need to be adjusted.” This playtesting is key, he says, to “experiencing Starfield the way a player would, at every stage of development.” According to Pagliarulo, the development team is “brutally honest” with itself “about what is and isn’t fun, what does and doesn’t work.”

As for what games to which he looks for inspiration while working on Starfield, Pagliarulo says he plays games from “all different genres” but cites Thief as a