Starfield has experienced one of the strangest post-launch phases in all of gaming. From starting strong with widespread acclaim to falling deep into the chasm of middling reviews, public perception of the game has changed quite drastically over time.
Recently, we sat down with Nate Purkeypile, a former developer at Bethesda and now solo creator of the upcoming game, The Axis Unseen. Surprisingly enough, the developer seems to carry similar sentiments towards Starfield since before the game was released to the public.
Nate Purkeypile Shares the Difficulties He Experienced Working on Starfield
Nate Purkeypile is currently working on his debut title as a solo developer, The Axis Within. The game features a fantasy open world where you hunt nightmarish beasts from different mythologies as heavy-metal tracks prop you up in the background. It’s a pretty wild concept and speaks to Nate’s creativity as a developer.
When asked how his 20+ years of experience with Bethesda and other studios influenced his upcoming game, though, he did not mention Starfield. Clarifying further, he explained how the team’s massive size and the rapid technical changes made it difficult to gain velocity or express much creativity during development.
Absolutely. I think it’s a lot more sterile of a game and lost a lot of that sense of surprise and wonder that you get playing Fallout and Skyrim.
Nate Purkeypile, FandomWire
He elaborated on how Starfield‘s different elements—the thousand planets, exploration with multiple loading screens, procedural content, and so on—don’t work as well together.
Such wasn’t the case with Nate Purkeypile’s past experiences, as during the interview, his love for Bethesda’s previous works could be felt from a mile away.
The Time Spent Working on Fallout 3 Holds a Special Place in Nate Purkeypile’s Heart
From the interview, it’s clear that the way Bethesda developed its previous games was quite different from how it is today. Fallout 3, Skyrim, and Fallout 4 all had fleshed-out development cycles with a clear vision of what each of these games was supposed to be.
Not only that, but the developers had a lot more freedom in how to translate that vision into the different elements of the game, something that helped shape Nate into the one-man army that he is today.
Fallout 3 especially receives much praise in this regard, and it checks out. After all, taking the isometric world of the previous two games and bringing it into a first-person RPG must have been a monumental task back in the day, but Nate and the rest of the developers seemingly enjoyed every bit of it.
Nowadays, while Fallout 3 is somewhat overshadowed by its cousin, Fallout: New Vegas, there’s no denying its impact on making players aware of what Bethesda was truly capable of.
Wanting the same Bethesda magic today is wishful thinking, but what do you think of Nate Purkeypile’s views on Starfield? Were Bethesda’s games of yore better than its current outings? Let us know in the comments below.
