Revolutionary Exploration: Starfield's Planets Surpass Diablo 4's Procedurally Generated Dungeons

Highlights

The inclusion of procedural generation in Bethesda's Starfield not only brings about distinct experiences with every playthrough but also alleviates the workload on developers, enabling the meticulously crafted aspects of the game to truly stand out.

Diablo 4's dungeon layouts, generated procedurally, begin as entertaining but eventually become repetitive. In contrast, Starfield's procedurally generated planets provide consistently engaging and rewarding exploration. Even the seemingly deserted planets in Starfield have a purpose, allowing players to build outposts and gather resources, thus enhancing the game's economy.

Bethesda's Starfield stands out among high-profile games by harnessing the capabilities of procedural generation to create unique experiences for players, not just within a single playthrough, but across various users. Procedural generation proves to be valuable in the gaming industry as it relieves developers from the burden of meticulously crafting environments and allows them to focus their resources on perfecting hand-crafted elements of the game. Considering the vast expanse of Starfield, featuring over a thousand planets, implementing procedural generation for several planets becomes practically a necessity. Fortunately, these procedurally generated planets in Starfield offer a more captivating experience compared to the randomly generated dungeons in Diablo 4.

Although Diablo 4 is not the first title in the Diablo series to incorporate procedural generation, it follows a peculiar approach by keeping its overworld map fixed while generating each dungeon layout using a set of pre-determined map templates. Initially, this "mix and match" style of generating layouts adds an element of excitement and novelty to the game. However, as players progress through the game, they start noticing repeated dungeon designs across multiple locations, thereby diminishing the illusion of variety. On the contrary, Starfield's procedurally generated planets manage to avoid this drawback entirely, ensuring that each visit to a procedurally generated planet holds the promise of worthwhile discoveries, resulting in a truly rewarding adventure.

How Procedural Generation Works in Diablo 4 Compared to Starfield

While both Starfield and Diablo 4 are large RPGs that use procedural generation, they differ in their implementation. Diablo 4, as an always-online live-service game, generates dungeons procedurally within a static world map. The dungeons have predetermined locations, but their interiors are created based on the size and objectives of each dungeon. The game uses a series of predefined map layouts to generate the design of each dungeon, resulting in some repetition for players who spend a lot of time in the game.

On the other hand, Starfield utilizes procedural generation to design its planets and their surfaces. With a vast number of star systems and thousands of potential planets to explore, procedural generation determines the terrain and features of each planet. However, some planets include handcrafted points of interest, such as science outposts or abandoned research facilities. These points of interest are intentionally designed elements within the generated world maps. In contrast to Diablo 4, Starfield's world maps are generated from design templates, and each point of interest is a unique location.

Even Starfield's 'Empty' Planets Serve a Purpose

Many players have raised concerns about the level of randomness in Starfield prior to its release. However, it is crucial to consider two important aspects. Firstly, the use of procedural generation in the game does not entail random elements; instead, it utilizes this technology to populate areas with predetermined assets. Secondly, Bethesda games have consistently employed procedural generation to some extent, wherein world maps possess a general structure, but areas are filled with vegetation, NPCs, and interesting locations based on the implementation of procedural generation. Given the vast number of planets available for exploration, the utilization of procedural generation becomes essential in bringing Bethesda's largest and most ambitious world to life.

Even players who have dedicated numerous hours to exploring Starfield's galaxy have yet to fully uncover every planet, and certainly not all of them offer points of interest that appeal to players. Nevertheless, even seemingly barren or "empty" planets hold significance in Starfield due to the opportunity to construct outposts and gather resources. Even when the planets themselves lack activities, they hold value within the game's economy.

Starfield is available now in early access launch for PC and Xbox Series X/S.