Starfield is set to launch on September 6, 2023, with lofty promises in terms of length and scale as Bethesda has been hyping it up as its "most ambitious" game ever. It will feature incredibly flexible character customization, the ability to build outposts and starships, and promises 1,000 unique planets for players to explore. However, once Todd Howard's Bethesda game finally releases, it may be too little too late compared to the competition.
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor released at the end of April, and it may already blow Starfield out of the water in one key aspect. While Starfield still has plenty of time to show what it's really made of, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor already makes a case that Bethesda's upcoming title may lag behind other games in terms of planetary exploration. Starfield's sheer number of planets fans can explore might not keep up with games that came before it.
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor's Small Planet Count
It may be confusing as to how Star Wars Jedi: Survivor's planets could rival Starfield's, but Survivor makes it a point that player freedom and exploration shouldn't be a numbers game. Star Wars Jedi: Survivor gives fans six planets to explore, with four of them in particular being incredibly expansive with their own sizable regions. Even the smallest planets serve an important purpose in terms of story and still hide a decent amount of secrets despite the smaller scale.
Players can even explore the iconic Star Wars setting of Coruscant right at the beginning of the game, which sucks players into the world of Star Wars right away—no matter if they've played the previous titles in the Star Wars Jedi series, or if they're just a fan of Star Wars films. The amount of detail found in these locations tells players that Respawn wanted to make each planet an adventure in itself rather than choosing to feature tons of different worlds, and that benefits the game far more than fans might realize.
Starfield's Many Planets Come with a Big Catch
Unlike Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, Starfield is said to feature a thousand planets for players to find and explore, but there are some caveats to this impressive number. While not much is known about Starfield's planets just yet, it learns from Jedi: Survivor while taking notes from No Man's Sky. It seems that Starfield will have fully developed and expanded planets as hubs for fans to visit, such as the case of Starfield's New Atlantis, and a huge number of other planets will be procedurally generated.
'Procedurally generated' doesn't mean that players will necessarily encounter different planets from one another other like No Man's Sky's planets. Bethesda has made it clear that while the planets in Starfield were generated at first, the studio saved the planets it liked and fixed them up, expanding them to better suit its vision. As much as this makes it so every planet may have something worth seeing, it may be too much for Starfield and its players.
While Bethesda may have done all it can to make 1,000 Starfield planets interesting, it's almost impossible to guarantee that they'll all be worth exploring, and they'll likely not at all be the same size as Star Wars Jedi: Survivor's own worlds. This is why Star Wars Jedi: Survivor may take the cake with its six planets as each of them has been carefully crafted to reward players for looking through every nook and cranny.
The difference between both planetary exploration games comes down to quantity versus quality, with Starfield aiming for what feels like quantity over the quality that Star Wars Jedi: Survivor uses to its benefit . In this way, Respawn may benefit from Bethesda dropping the ball. After all, if one fan tires of Starfield's planetary offerings, then Star Wars Jedi: Survivor may be a game worth trying instead.
Starfield launches on September 6 for PC and Xbox Series X/S.