Starfield’s problem is that the planets have too much stuff. Not too little.

We’ve all heard the complaint: empty, lifeless planets with nothing to do on them.

After playing a lot of Starfield, I think the problem is exactly the opposite. They should have focused on putting more unique locations in the areas around UC and Freestar space and then the rest of the planets should have been mostly empty, especially the planets way far out at the edge of the map.

I get the lore about the colony war, but it doesn’t make any sense for there to be a million abandoned research labs, military outposts, and mines that far out in the galaxy. It completely kills the atmosphere for me to travel as far out on the map as I can and immediately see 10 POIs and watch a ship land right down next to me. It kills the sense of loneliness and isolation that they otherwise worked so hard to craft.

They should have recognized that random POIs were never going to fill up the 1,000 planets to make them all super interesting and recreate the Elder Scrolls/Fallout exploration experience. Instead, they should have leaned into the fun part about the random planets: resource gathering and scanning alien life. If the game had more uses for resources (and didn’t sell them at every vendor) and if the game had more reasons to scan and gather data, these two mechanics would carry the random planet exploration on their own. The player would feel the need to travel to distant planets to get rare resources or to make extra money surveying previously unrecorded alien life.

What we ended up with is kind of a worst of both worlds. These don’t really feel like vast distant planets, but they also don’t feel like thoughtfully crafted worlds. They feel like a weak rollercoaster that was thoughtlessly tossed together.

If there weren’t so many POIs, it would clue the player into realizing that planets aren’t meant for the old type of BGS handcrafted exploration. They’re there for resource gathering and scanning. Then any occasional POI you did find would feel meaningful: “Wow, someone crafted this mining facility way out here. I wonder who and why?”

Ive been having a ton of fun exploring in the game by avoiding POIs as much as I can and essentially pretending they don’t exist while I gather resources and scan. I wish BGS had leaned into this game play. The nonstop randomly generated POIs feel like a bit of a cop out.