Starfield and its relation to Myst

Is Starfield the New Myst? 

The Planets of Starfield all have their own biomes and characteristics.

The battle is joined on the Steam review page for Starfield. It has become such an area of contention among so many players. There are reasons why video games such as Starfield and others tend to engender such heated passions among players. I think that video games much like music tend to be mediums that are very much part of pop culture rather than high culture. Some people still want to think of games as having some higher purpose. However, to most people out there, video games are still seen as electronic toys. This is because when the medium began, it was time when pop culture was ascendant across the West. While classical orchestras were continuing to fill the airwaves throughout the Post-World War 2 era, rock music and other pop music were taking over. Classical music was square in the eyes of the cool young kids and in their minds, it was time to shake up society just as the flappers had done during the Jazz Age.  Video games came right into this environment and became associated with youth and pop culture. As such, games such as Starfield are renowned for their technical achievements but are still put into a box where they are seen as entertainment and not as amazing feats of software engineering and art.

Starfield is driven by its technology.

How can video games still be seen as toys when they have made such strides in these past fifty years? Starfield has immense graphical fidelity, and yet it is still not seen on the same level as a work of art. I think that in many ways, Starfield is like Myst when it was released some thirty years ago. Much like Myst, Starfield is a game that relies heavily on its technology to awe the player. It isn’t so much about the gameplay as its tech will carry it through. While the team at Bethesda was working very hard at trying to get the game to be free of glitches and bugs, they were also able to accomplish an amazing feat in software engineering. They got to render many planets and moons with great respect to scientific accuracy and principles. While some conceits were made for the video game industry’s emphasis on player choice, the game is one of the most realistic mainstream depictions of space exploration. While not a simulation like some other games, Starfield tries its hardest to not simply tread the old tropes in video games and tries to do something new with the medium. Considering that video games have a tendency to try to outdo each other with innovation, that is not easy achievement, especially with huge games.

Procedural Generation is Starfield's Most important Innovation.

Procedural generation is probably the most important technology in Starfield. Graphics are not really the strong suit of Starfield even though the game has incredible attention to details, especially on inanimate objects such as spacesuits and even mundane aesthetics like how walls on space stations and ships look in comparison. I think that procedural generation is probably one of the greatest achievements in video games since the arrival of 3D graphics in the 1990s. I think people need to understand that video games have been getting larger and larger in size and scope since the 1990s and we need to start helping people in the industry be able to enjoy their jobs without causing them so much hardship in the process. With procedural generation, one can cut the amount of time that is spent on having to handcraft everything. While there is room for other games that are handcrafted, I believe that for games that require tons of programmers and artists, there is going to be some automation in the process. The approach can be seen in the mass production of physical goods in the United States. We cannot handcraft everything in an industrial economy. Even the Romans, with the pre-industrial economy, had mass production for their army. Why shouldn’t we have the same for such expensive products such as video games?

This technology is going to truly change the industry and make it easier to make games.

I think that it’s time to take stock of what this industry can achieve with procedural generation. When I look at games such as Morrowind, I understand why people love such games.

However, such games are part of a past tradition that is no longer going to serve video games as well in comparison. We need to revere such great games such as Morrowind, which set the path towards the handcrafting era we see today in the Elder Scrolls, but I believe that technology has caught with the vision of the teams that were working on the original games. It is time we start embracing these new technologies and start creating some incredibly interesting and exciting worlds to explore. While this approach may not appeal to all, it is important that Bethesda keeps trying to innovate with this technology.

Starfield’s random environments are already more interesting than Skyrim’s radiant quests. I believe that they will get more complex with time, and I think that much of the criticisms about these environments will become more tempered and people will realize how important these technical achievements really are.

While it is common to be very cynical in these days, it is important to remember that Starfield’s procedural generation is an important technical achievement that deserves more attention. While many have been criticizing it, I believe that this tool is going to be very useful for helping the video industry innovate and help workers in the industry to be able to more resourceful with their work and projects that bring our great games to our store shelves and Steam. Hopefully, these gaming companies will look at this technology and implement more of it in order to speed up the making of video games so that we can enjoy them without having costs to the quality.