Bethesda Game Studios is currently hard at work on The Elder Scrolls 6, but the developer has not given up on its massive sci-fi RPG, Starfield. With DLC and updates still in the works for the game, fans will still be treated to more content in the future, but will they ever get a Starfield 2?
Former lead systems designer Kurt Kuhlmann, who left Bethesda after the release of Starfield, believes that a second game is not in the cards. “I would be very surprised [if there was a sequel],” Kuhlmann told us. “I don’t think Starfield was anywhere near successful enough to do a Starfield 2.”
Starfield was a game of massive ambition, a game that the developer previously explained was not actually feasible for the studio to make in its dream form, but Kuhlmann believes a sequel would be able to deliver on the true promise of what that game was supposed to be.
“It’s, in a way, too bad, because I think with the lessons learned on Starfield, a Starfield 2 could have been much closer to the game that Todd [Howard] had [in mind],” he continued. “You can envision that game, you can imagine that game. That’s not quite what Starfield really is.”
Kuhlmann explained that Starfield is not “fully coherent” as “the ultimate game” it was dreamt up to be. “You can travel around all these planets, you can land anywhere you want, you have total freedom. Plus, there’s this really cool story and all these cool characters… And modular spaceships, why not? Let’s put that in there. And you can build a base anywhere you want on any planet.”
That last part, the base building outpost system, is one element that Kuhlmann uses as an example of the RPG’s lack of cohesion. The game’s outpost system is incredible in the fact that you can build anywhere across hundreds of planets without restriction, and the game will remember your place in that world, and they designed it.
“For what it is, as a standalone system, it’s cool, but it’s not nearly as integrated with the rest of the game,” he said. In Fallout 4, Preston Garvey introduced you to the settlement system and there was, as Kuhlmann says, a “thematic” point to its inclusion. In Starfield, no one introduces you to the outposts and, for technical reasons, there’s no NPC settlements for them, either. They’re your outposts. They link into resource and crafting systems, but they’re not propped up narratively.
“It caused problems for it to be integrated with the story and the missions and stuff in Fallout 4, so it was kind of put to the side,” Kuhlmann said. “Which begs the question of, well, why is it still in the game? That’s a decision above me, it wasn’t my decision. You might say, well, we shouldn’t have it then if we’re not going to integrate it with the story, then it’s just this system sitting over there with a massive amount of work involved.”
While Starfield isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, it is still a pretty great game and, as Kuhlmann states, it’s a game of near unparalleled “ambition”. There are obvious ways in which the game could have been an easier game to make, but that wasn’t the point of Starfield. The point of the game was its ambition, to be the so-called “ultimate game”, and there’s a chance that a sequel could actually pull that off.
With that said, Bethesda has not given up on the sci-fi game just yet. Following the game’s near-transformational Free Lanes update, the RPG is better than ever, and there are seemingly years of additional plans, as long as Xbox’s consistent layoffs don’t squander them.
