Over the course of development, Bethesda has been making a big deal out of its promise that Starfield will have 1000+ planets that you'll be able to explore in any way you like. Most people will know that it's physcially impossible for developers at Bethesda to handcraft that much content, so a lot of the work will be done by procedural generation. However, Bethesda has been pretty vague as to how much stuff to do will be on these planets, but director Todd Howards has finally revealed more info in a new interview.
Speaking with Kinda Funny, Howard reveals that roughly 10 percent of Starfield's 1000+ planets will contain life, as developers at Bethesda have attempted to replicate "Goldilocks Zones". It's implied that the rest of Starfield's planets will be pretty barren but full of resources, and Howard explains that there will be procedurally generated things for players to find on most planets.
"There's no way we're gonna go and hand craft an entire planet," explains Howard. "What we do is we hand craft individual locations, and some of those are placed specifically, obviously the main cities and other quest locations, and then we have a suite of them that are generated and placed when you land, depending on that planet."
"Now, I'll also say for us, we view it as giving you when you look at a system, here's the menu of the things you can do. Like science, we're pushing it about 10 percent of those planets have life on them. We're pushing it to the edge of what do people think, what planets are in that Goldilocks Zone versus planets that have resources."
Obviously, only 10 percent of Starfield's planets containing life on them sounds rather concerning on the surface, but that's still roughly 100 planets full to the brim with life, cities, and other places to explore. On top of that, we have all of the more barren planets that contain resources and the odd procedurally generated activity. This was pretty much always going to be the case if we're being sensible, especially since Bethesda has opted to go for scale rather than a more condensed galaxy exploring experience.
Elsewhere in the video, Todd Howard also confirms certain features that Starfield will and won't have any land vehicles, as you'll have a pretty speedy jetpack to get around quickly. It's was also revealed that Starfield will have a "Big Font" mode to help with accessibility, you'll be able to sell data from the planets that you explore, and that there's only four crew members that you'll be able to romance.