“It was a surprise to me”: Former Starfield Dev Claims Despite Improving Performance Including So Many Loading Zones Was Unnecessary

Starfield is an extensive game with a wide scope. There is no doubt about the mastery involved in developing the game; however, there is still one thing that seems quite bothersome to even a former Bethesda employee.

The game is riddled with too many unnecessary loading zones spread across the map. This makes the experience of playing the game feel jittery and not seamless. Even Nathan Pukeypile, a former Bethesda employee who even worked on Starfield briefly, believes that despite improving performance, the loading zones do not serve any greater purpose.

Starfield has so many loading zones, it’s actually funny

Loading zones are areas in a game where the engine transitions between different places or segments while showing players a loading screen. It is quite a normal feature used by most large-scale open-world RPG games since it helps manage the performance of the game better.

Loading zones help manage the massive scale of a game by enabling your hardware to only render what is necessary and leaving out the rest. It reduces the strain from the divide by reducing the scope of work into smaller, manageable segments.

However, excess of anything is bad, and too many loading screens are not the right way to approach any game, especially a game like Starfield, which is known for its immersion. Even Shattered Space failed to address some of the issues players were having with the game.

He was surprised to see so many loading zones popping up in the city of Nexus, on which he worked extensively before leaving the studio. He said:

It could have existed without those. Like, some of those were not there when I had been working on it and so it was a surprise to me that there was as many as there were.

Pukeypile shared his opinion on the matter and also gave insights into how things were before he left the studio. He revealed that during the early development period, there were significantly fewer loading zones in the game.

Loading zones are inherent to Bethesda’s Creation Engine

Bethesda uses its Creation Engine to develop games instead of Unreal. Loading zones are inherent to the creation engine since that is just the way it works. You will encounter a loading zone in Starfield countless times while boarding or exiting a ship, traveling from one planet to another, or moving rapidly through cities. Starfield is often criticized for having bad space travel mechanics

Loading zones also serve the purpose of saving the player’s time spent traveling. However, some people might be a little more interested in traveling without a loading screen popping up.

However, if you are well accustomed to Starfield, you might know ways to void most of the loading zones in the game, especially the ones located in Neon. Do you like loading zones? Let us know in the comments below.

This post belongs to FandomWire and first appeared on FandomWire