(...) Starfield hit just under 300 people on the team (...) [BGS] are like 430 right now, but we have a full team on Fallout 76, we have a mobile team, we still support Skyrim (...)

Silence on joue ! Entretien exclusif avec Todd Howard, réalisateur de «Starfield» – Libération (liberation.fr)

Bethesda Game Studios is tiny for an AAA team working on games of this scale. Maybe it's a hold over from the Private Equity days of having to be lean and profitable but now they're under Microsoft they should definitely staff up, especially when they're producing 10m+ IPs. Rockstar Games, I don't know how big their individual teams are but in total they have 5,939 employees and they only work on Red Dead Redemption and GTA. Think Cyberpunk's core team was bigger too. What other RPGs can we compare them to, Lol.

They should be like 600 minimum Imo.

Phillip is probably pulling his hair out looking at the money on the table, trying to convince Todd to ease up on developing everything all under one roof, Lmao. Be like "Todd! Please! Just think of how much money Fallout 5 and Elder Scrolls could make us! We need them to release faster!"

It's the same story with Bioware though, they tried to give someone else a shot at Mass Effect but fucked it so bad it resulted in that studio (Montreal) being closed and now Mass Effect/Dragon Age are back under one roof (Edmonton) and we can't get Mass Effect until frigging Dragon Age is out and they've barely started on Mass Effect because Dragon Age is still deep in development. Even so, Bioware is bigger than Bethesda Game Studios.

Same story with Rockstar, Red Dead Redemption 2's development was so rough that they eventually brought everyone under one team again and now Rockstar North leads them both. What is it with developers and being unable to hand their IPs over to a capable team other than the core team? Lol. In an ideal world, we'd have one Bethesda studio focused on Elder Scrolls, one focused on Starfield and one focused on Fallout.

I don't understand how you can find an external developer to create a great spinoff but struggle with having an internal sister studio lead a project, Lol.

Yeah, this is definitely a small team to build a AAA game of this scale. The only AAA games with a comparable scale really are RDR2 (1600 devs) and Cyberpunk 2077 (started with about 250 when full development first started, ended with 500+devs by the time the game launched). Starfield by comparison would have started development with about 150 and ended up with just under 300 by the time it released. That is just very small for a game of this scale in terms of map sizes and hours of content and different gameplay systems. It's why Starfield relies on automation for so many development tasks from landscape development to creature/alien creation to randomizing elements of the character creator they designed for background "citizen" type NPC's. Bethesda has always been undersized compared to the size of the games they make, they made Skyrim with about 90-100 and Fallout 4 with 140 as I recall, when Skyrim released the average AAA dev team was like 200 devs, while when Fallout 4 released the average was more like 300 devs.

Bethesda absolutely needs to staff up in the coming years, and a big staff up at that. They have 3 popular IP's to develop moving forwards instead of 2 like the old days, and AAA game development continues to get larger and more expensive each passing year. Bethesda Game Studios overall needs to aim to hit like 750 devs within the next 4 years imo, split with about 100 on Fallout 76 content development, 450 on TES 6, and 200 on Fallout 5. They can no longer afford to develop one main game at a time now that they have 3 big IP, instead they need to aim for active development on two of the 3 IP at once (rather than active development on one and pre-production on a 2nd like they currently do). The only other good option besides simultaneous development on TES 6 and Fallout 5 would be to let Obsidian make a Fallout spinoff, so that fans won't have to wait until like 2034 for the next big Fallout RPG.

I'm going to be 100 here pimp, you deserve it for even following them to begin with. 

Common Ryuu L. 

Been playing Starfield for 9 hours now.

The start isn't slow at all. Especially compared to other Bethesda games.

Skyrim is slow as shit with that stupid cart ride where you can't do anything and then waiting for your turn to be beheaded.

In Fallout 4 it takes a while to get even into the Vault before you get out of it.

It's much quicker here. Mine three ores, get the artifact and you'll already have your first contact with pirates. 

Graphics are mind blowing. Sharp textures, exceptional face animations and incredible lighting make this probably the most beautiful game of this gen. I'm very impressed. Atomic Heart (the game I most recently beat) looks like shit in comparison. Obviously it comes at the cost of 30 FPS.

Yeah you're right, I increased the film grain and it does look better in many areas and adds atmosphere. Opening mine didn't look good, it was there was this yellow fog that messed up contrast & lightning. But I think I'm sticking with heavy film grain for now.

I love film grain, I turn that on in any game that allows it.

Top 20 Games of 2023 based on TA player counts - August update

*on game pass

JAN | FEB | MARCH | APRIL | MAY | JUNE | JULY

Biggest Debut: Starfield - 253,699

Biggest Gainer: Exoprimal - 8,210

Slowest Gainer: Monster Hunter Rise - 1,282