In fact, if another studio had released Starfield, "it would have been received differently," Nesmith argued. The designer said that Starfield failed to meet expectations set by being a space game from the makers of Skyrim and Fallout.

Possibly contributing to a comparatively muted response to Starfield was the game's procedural generation, Nesmith theorized.

"I’m an enormous space fan, I’m an amateur astronomer, I’m up on all that stuff, a lot of the work I did on Starfield was on the astronomical data," Nesmith said. "… but space is inherently boring. It’s literally described as nothingness. So moving throughout that isn’t where the excitement is, in my opinion."

To Nesmith, procedural generation made the planets feel very "samey" and less exciting, which is "where it falls apart." Nesmith also lamented the lack of enemy variety, saying that regular humans were the only serious enemies despite the presence of "cool alien creatures."

This is kind of a "duh" quote but then it makes you wonder how no one on the team realized this early on in the dev stages. I also disagree with that first line. I don't think starfield gets a ~82 average if any other dev made it, I think it gets a 72 or lower. Name brand power does a lot for things.