Exploring Starfield's Procedural Planets: Life, Vehicles, and Lore.

Starfield director Todd Howard explains that the game's 1,000 planets will serve different roles, with some having resources but being barren, while others will be capable of sustaining varied life. The differences are meant to encourage players to keep exploring. The team has a "suite" of individual locations made by the team, and those will be "generated or placed" when players land on a given planet depending on what type it is. Booster packs with dedicated skill tree upgrades will help players move around faster, and sometimes players might just visit a location to scan it and take the survey data back to sell somewhere else in the galaxy.