WithBethesdacommitted to improvingStarfieldthrough new updates every 6 weeks, players are now asking that environmental hazards either be completely removed or reworked. Currently, they offer no real benefit to Starfield’s gameplay, with one player calling them “cartoonishly bad.”
Over on the Starfield subreddit, a discussion around the game’s environmental hazards feature was sparked by a Reddit user who asked Game Director Todd Howard to “get rid” of the environmental resistance elements.The posthas gained over 1,300 upvotes in less than 24 hours, with many of the almost 150 responses agreeing.
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“All of the environmental resistance crap needs to be reworked because it’s cartoonishly bad, but the airborne and even the corrosive damage needs to go away,” the post’s author stated. In response,one usershared the perfect example of why the game’s environmental hazards don’t make a whole lot of sense. “Yeah, getting a lung infection from a planet with a sandstorm that has zero oxygen in my spacesuit is pretty lame.”
Others opted to discuss the realism aspect of including environmental hazards in Starfield. Whileone usersaid that the realism aspect would be extremely annoying, its current design calls too much attention to the unrealistic elements of it. They also gave another perfect example, saying, “If the suits are vulnerable to corrosive gases, how do you not lose pressure the first time you get shot?”
So, Why Don’t Starfield’s Environmental Hazards Make Any Sense?
If you haven’t been keeping up with everything that’s come out of Todd Howard’s mouth since Starfield’s inception, you’re likely a little confused as to why these environmental hazards don’t serve much of a purpose.
In short, the answer is that they were originally intended to be much more vital to Starfield’s gameplay. Ultimately, Bethesda made the decision to scale back the environmental features of Starfield. In aninterviewwith Insomniac Games' Ted Price back in September 2023, Todd Howard said that the environmental features were once very “punitive.”
“We kept trying to tune it,” Howard said. The Game Director then explained how the system was very complicated for players to understand. Given that Howard had repeatedly iterated that Bethesda’s stance is for their games to be, above all else, fun, it’s no surprise that he then revealed the studio decided to “nerf the hell out [environmental damage].”
The idea was that players would have multiple spacesuits, one for cold planets, one for high radiation planets, etc, that they could then switch between depending on the planet they were traveling to. Howard also said in the interview that it could be “something [Bethesda] addresses moving forward.” Who knows, maybe there’s still hope that Starfield’s environmental hazards will actually serve a purpose.
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An Old Starfield Concept Art Piece Has Players Longing For What Could Have Been
We got a very different Starfield than this image shows.
