I was curious to know if that placement was based on a lifeform’s evolution trajectory, because by the time we meet these creatures in the game, they’ve already reached their phase of surviving and thriving in a particular hospitable environment.
“We had an amazing variety of creatures created by our artists to choose from — there was not a specific system that determined how creatures evolved,” says Combs.
“When placing creatures, there was thought put into which creatures made the most sense for which world: hard armored crabs might make sense for harsh, marshy worlds, for example. A big part of the process was if the creature looked right on a certain planet — ‘does this look like something that would thrive in the savannas of Akila?’ But they are also alien worlds, so sometimes you want a creature that looks alien.”
Piecing it Together
Creating all the creatures in
Starfield required a significant amount of thought and effort from the development team. Nogueira shares that, during concepting, they produced dozens of silhouettes to create a diverse pool of alien creatures. Each of these concepts were grounded in realism by studying real creatures from our planet, while taking note of how diverse our own ecosystem is.
“Our next step was to identify archetypes from our visual exploration,” Nogueira details.
“Our goal was to select the best variety of body types to fill specific roles in our substantial number of planets and biomes. This led to us selecting setups such as quadrupeds, octopedes, hexapods, flying and floating creatures, and many others. In the end, we created 15 base archetypes to build from.”
A big part of the process was if the creature looked right on a certain planet — ‘does this look like something that would thrive in the savannas of Akila?’
Senior System Designer Sam Combs
Combs shared that the creatures were split into rigs — the shared skeletons and animations that unique skins are built on top of to give the creatures their distinctive appearance. Most of those skins also have different variants to suit the biomes they are found in. What was impressive to learn was that artists concepted and handcrafted each of the creatures — there is no swapping of body parts, meaning everything you find while on your explorations has been designed specifically.
“We considered creating a library of creature parts that could be mixed and matched to produce a variety of life early on in Starfield production,” Carnow explained.
“However, we discarded the idea because it could not produce the fidelity of creatures we wanted. A mix and match system can produce some cool and unexpected results, but it tends to work better in more stylized games. So, every one of the close to 200 creatures in Starfield was built as a unique piece of art, and nothing is piecemeal.”
Let Them Fight
With the “rules of life” in place, it was then a matter of creating the behavior of these creatures. How would they respond to a human encroaching on their territory? What would they do with other creatures around? Would they be territorial? These were all considerations the team was contending with when planting these creatures throughout
Starfield’s galaxy.
“We have different behavior sets, combat styles, and attack and defense mods we assign to each creature. The biggest difference is between predators and prey,” Combs shares. “The body type and visuals were helpful for determining which creature behaviors to assign. For example, an aggressive-looking spider with fangs would make more sense visually as a predator, while a more docile pig-like creature would make more sense as prey. Larger creatures were made tougher, and if they looked like they had natural armor, there was a better chance of them being assigned a higher damage resistance.”
The animators made sure that every one of their rigs could support any potential creature behavior. They wanted to make sure that the behavior of life in each world was surprising, so they worked to avoid in-game behaviors being driven solely by it.
“If every biped the player encounters is an aggressive predator, and every quadruped is a foraging herbivore, it shrinks the player’s expectations and makes the worlds less interesting to explore,” Carnow shares. “We tried to determine the behavior of each creature based on the look of its anatomical structure. There is a lot of wiggle room however, as we did not want everything with pointy teeth to be a predator for example. Nature should be surprising.”
How fauna would respond to the player is also part of that aspect of keeping nature surprising in the game, but also how to determine their difficulty during these encounters when paired with the type of planet they were found on.
“The level of the planet is the main factor in determining difficulty,” explains Combs.
“The strength of the creatures can also be adjusted with a challenge rating with a range from Very Easy to Very Hard, that bumps the level of the creature above or below the default level by varying degrees. This lets us vary the difficulty of the creatures encountered, allowing for easier prey and tougher predators. The creatures can also be given certain abilities that give them better damage resistance or ranged attacks that can make them stronger.”
Every one of the close to 200 creatures in Starfield was built as a unique piece of art, and nothing is piecemeal.
Lead Character Artist Ben Carnow
Rising to the Challenge
Combs shared that determining combat behavior was challenging, and took the most time and effort from programmers, animators, artists, and sound designers to make everything feel right. In addition to working with level and quest designers to get the creatures doing what they wanted in their spaces and quests, it became one of the most difficult jobs in adding alien life in the game.
“The immense number of creatures was the largest challenge from the design side, more so than any individual creature,” Combs explains.
“Getting them distributed among the planets in a way that made sense, and modular enough that they could be assigned different behaviors on different planets without seeming too similar, was a challenge. The Terrormorph was one of the most complex that got the most screentime, and required a team of artists, animators, programmers, and designers to get the unique behaviors working.”
“Designing flying creatures that feel believable and look alien was (also) a challenge for us,” says Nogueira.
“The main difficulty was to make them look different from each other while having to incorporate specific features such as wings, which from a distance can make them all appear the same.”
“We created interesting, engaging, and visually impressive fauna on hundreds of worlds that interact with the player and each other in interesting ways,” says Combs.
“I would say we got close to what we wanted. There is always more you wish you could do – I still wish you could tame the creatures and build a zoo or have a pet Ashta follow you around, for example.”
As players, we may take for granted just how much goes into being able to explore and interact with a video game universe that is teeming with life — games themselves feel like tiny miracles as it is. Knowing now the incredible level of care and attention to detail that went into creating these planets, and hand placing each of the alien creatures we discover, has made the entire experience of planet hopping in
Starfield that much more enticing to continue.
The implementation of broad game development ideas like,
“creatures are cool, and we want lots of them,” as Nogueira shared earlier, is quite the star to reach for. Nonetheless, it has been remarkable to learn about the team’s dedication to their work and the passion that went into crafting and populating
Starfield’s many alien worlds.
Paraphrasing Carl Sagan, we have been carried across these worlds by this team’s imagination.