Bethesda "nerfed the hell out of" Starfield's planet atmosphere effects

Exploring Starfield's planets was previously a lot harder, Bethesda has revealed, before the developer decided to dial back some "very punitive" atmosphere effects.

The Bethesda space RPG's many planets still feature environmental hazards, such as extreme temperatures and radiation. But the impact these have on your character is now fairly minimal - whereas previously this system would have seen players having to swap spacesuits to meet local conditions.

Bethesda boss Todd Howard revealed the change during an episode of the Game Maker's Notebook podcast, which is well worth a watch. In it, Howard discusses the challenges of creating interesting planets, fun space combat, and what changed during Starfield's development.

One example of a change was how tough it was to survive on some of Starfield's many explorable worlds, Howard said.

"So the way the environmental damage works in the game, on planets and your suit, you have resistances to certain types of atmosphere effects, whether that's radiation or thermal, etc. And that was a pretty complex system, actually, it was very punitive," Howard revealed.

"And so we kept trying - where you get these afflictions, we kept tuning it. And what we did at the end of the day - and it was a complicated system for players to understand - we just nerfed the hell out of it."

Now, planetary conditions still pop up on screen - but their effects are minimal. And this is by design, Howard said, with the resulting effects now more for "flavour" than to impart any genuine risk to players.

"It ends up being [that] it matters only a little bit," he continued. "It matters more in flavour. The affliction you get is more annoying knowing you have it than the game result, usually - I'm generalising.

"So let's just dial it down, because if we dial it way back it becomes more flavour on the screen than it does a gameplay system. We had originally wanted where you had multiple spacesuits - one for high radiation planets, one for cold planets..."

Howard concluded by saying this was something Bethesda may still address again in the future.

Perhaps this could be an option if players want more of a challenge in Starfield's intriguing New Game Plus?